John Boyne on Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie: Toxic masculinity steals the show

Irish Times

a day ago

Bring the House Down
Author
:
The Borough Press
ISBN-13
:
9780008688011
Publisher
:
Charlotte Runcie
Guideline Price
:
£16.99
One of the most talked about television shows this year has been
Netflix
's
Adolescence
.
Toxic masculinity lay at the heart of that programme, albeit in the form of a 13-year-old boy. Charlotte Runcie's debut novel Bring the House Down explores similar territory, only with a character some 20 years older who is so oblivious to his mistreatment of women that its exposure seems as surprising to him as it is to everyone else.
The premise is brilliant: Alex Lyons, a well-known theatre critic, reviews a one-woman show by Hayley Sinclair at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. He hates it – to be fair, it does sound terrible – then goes to a bar where he writes an eviscerating, one-star review, files it with his editor for publication the next day, and then, by chance, runs into the performer . They chat and share a drink before going back to the flat he's sharing with a colleague, the novel's narrator Sophie, where they have sex. At no point does he tell her who he is or what he's done. The following morning Hayley reads the review and all hell breaks loose.
[
Adolescence: Why can't we look away from Netflix's hypnotic hit?
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]
I don't want to give away exactly how Hayley wreaks her revenge, but suffice to say that the third chapter of this extraordinary book left me open-mouthed with a mixture of horror and laughter. From there, the book focuses on the remaining weeks of the festival, when Hayley becomes a star, Alex becomes a pariah, and Sophie becomes increasingly estranged from her boyfriend while growing closer to her disgraced friend.
Runcie spares us no detail of Alex's colourful love life over the years but, wisely, she never allows her anti-hero to have committed any actual crimes. He's just a good-looking guy with a privileged upbringing and a great job who's spent his adult life using women for his own sexual gratification while never giving their feelings a second thought. Refusing to accept any responsibility for the pain he's caused, he continues to defend his behaviour in ways that only add to his downfall.
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Alex's reaction to being challenged by people he considers his social and intellectual inferiors reminded me of the arrogance and narcissism of the former television actor turned right-wing provocateur Laurence Fox.Taken to task on Question Time in 2020, Fox was so outraged at being criticised for his ill-informed views on race that he effectively imploded, losing his career and decrying on social media how England is overrun by foreigners, burning Pride flags, posting unflattering pictures of women who've called him out, and losing multiple libel cases.
Fox has learned nothing from his public disgrace and Alex feels deliberately created in his image, not least because he's also the son of a famous English thespian and has grown up surrounded by acting royalty. His sense of entitlement is astonishing, as is his utter conviction that in reviewing plays, and condemning most of them, he is, 'elevating the culture'. Which he's not. Only the artist can elevate or degrade the culture; the critic simply comments upon it.
Bring the House Down is a powerful read, although there were a few moments that might have been excised. At times, Runcie – herself a former theatre reviewer for The Telegraph
– allows Sophie's festival anecdotes to feel more like autobiography than fiction, such as when a US journalist expresses her disbelief that she has no formal training. And when Hayley, towards the end of the book, remarks that 'women are the strongest creatures on the planet', a character could have questioned this generalisation. After all, there are plenty of awful women out there, just as there are plenty of awful men, and decency is not restricted to one sex or the other.
A few years after the #MeToo scandals, Bring the House Down is a timely reminder that even though the news cycle has moved on, the behaviour that inspired it continues, courtesy of men such as
Andrew Tate
,
Donald Trump
or
Conor McGregor
, and a global media that hangs off their every word, amplifying their voices despite their having treated women in ways that anyone with any moral convictions would decry.
Politicians fell over themselves to tell people they watched Adolescence with their teenage sons. They could do worse than buy them a copy of this novel as well.