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Jump to navigationJump to searchA Rock and a High Place by Dan Mooney (view source)
Revision as of 15:20, 22 January 2018
, 15:20, 22 January 2018no edit summary
''A Rock and a High Place'' is a melancholic story of how our aging population feels lost in our ever evolving world. The novel begins with our widowed hero Joel bored and depressed with his lot, in both life and his nursing home. To bring agency into his life, he decides to kill himself. He shares his plans with the newest resident, a retired flamboyant soap actor called Frank, and the two of them embark on a mission to find the perfect suicide. Along the way, they discover the strength within themselves and the strength of friendship.
Dan Mooney has crafted a brilliant English comedy here. It is that perfect blend of pitch black sardonic humour that is never in your face, something the Brits do so well. The opening line, '''Miller,'' Joel whispered across the space between their two beds. ''Why aren't you dead yet?''' This sets the jet black tone, following in the vein of Martin Amis and his father, Kingsley. The humour is used to brilliant effect to accentuate the tragedy lying beneath. Writers have been using this literary effect with great success from Joseph Heller to Hunter S. Thompson and Dan Mooney can be added to this list. This novel, although it is a gentle tale of friendship between two old men, highlights a subject that society doesn't address.
Our society views human beings as either useful or not and, once we have outlived our usefulness, we become a burden, something to hide away and forget and we do forget all too often. The elderly are left to stagnate, their minds fading away from boredom and repetition. Mooney illustrates this impressively as we witness how mind-numbing Joel's days are. He has nothing to live for, he goes into the garden for a walk just to change his surroundings and he watches game shows for two hours because there is nothing else to do. Age UK's research states that 63% of adults aged 52 or over, who have been widowed, report feeling lonely. Mooney illustrates wonderfully how one can feel isolated when surrounded by people. As Roxy Music stated 'loneliness is a crowded room'.
