An enormous amount of hoopla surrounds the publication of this debut novel. Film rights have been sold and six-figure deals done in the UK, US and Canada.
“An absolute scream!” says the publicity. “Jaw-droppingly hilarious!” Readers will have high hopes, if not for a series of belly laughs, at least for some sniggers.
Action centres on a group of middle-aged friends. Pam and Hank, Marlene and Dave, Larry and Nancy, and Sharisa and Andre have hung out together for decades. The men share a liking for boating and fishing, the women tell one another everything – possibly too much. Their adult children are around the same age as each other. There have been countless holidays and dinners enjoyed in mutually appreciative company. When out on the boat, music comes from a curated playlist of around 800 songs titled “Fun Depressing”, which includes John Prine, Alabama Shakes, Wilco, Bruce Springsteen and Johnny Cash. So far, so middle of the road.
Life is not too difficult. Neither rich nor poor, the couples enjoy comfortable middle-class standards of living. But old age is not so far away. Early in the novel, the author says of Pam, “Whenever someone asked when she and Hank were retiring – a way of combining ‘man, you got old’ and ‘how successful were you?’ into one socially acceptable question – Pam struggled to answer. She found it downright humiliating that she’d worked her entire adult life but couldn’t afford to retire.” Pam and Hank’s only child, Claire, has emigrated to New Zealand, which as we all know is the best place to send a character if the story demands distance and loss.
Encroaching decrepitude and fallen libidos lead to short tempers. The marriages approach territory occupied by Roald Dahl’s famous Mr and Mrs Twit. In that children’s story, Mrs Twit adds invisible worms to Mr Twit’s spaghetti; Mr Twit slowly, over time, adds to the length of Mrs Twit’s walking stick, so that his wife thinks she’s shrinking. Here, Pam despises Hank because he ate her left-overs: “[H]e didn’t just stab me, he twisted the knife. You don’t do that to someone you love. That’s when I knew he doesn’t love me any more. When he ate my pad thai.” Insult is added to injury by the fact that Hank wasn’t particularly hungry but ate the food just because he could.
We are reminded again and again by the women that their husbands have disappeared, only to be replaced by these plump, greedy and lazy versions of the men they once were. “The table’s edge covered his pot belly, and the shadows hid his jowls. She searched for a glimpse of the man she’d married, but he was long gone. Sometimes she missed him.”
Occasionally, among the facile causes of discontent there are serious reasons – one husband’s homophobia prevents him from accepting a gay son, another has lied for years about his unresolved fertility issues.
The men are not so critical of their wives but nevertheless are not holding on to any foolish romantic notions of everlasting love. Concerns for money and financial wellbeing have replaced that. As the women devise a dastardly retirement plan, so do the men, the groups divided. There are many reversals of fortune, some brought about by hit-man Hector, some by miscommunication, and others by the beautiful, diminutive but dangerous Padma, who runs the casino that employs several of the characters.
Humour is particular to each of us. The Retirement Plan disappoints. The comedy is hackneyed, the story indistinct from thousands of others and the characters tediously one-dimensional.
The Retirement Plan, by Sue Hincenbergs (Hachette, $37.99), is out now.
