A Sense of Occasion by Brodie Crellin review – a surprising and darkly funny debut

Most of us come upon our family’s dysfunctions gradually, like a door that opens a little wider each year. This uncle, you find out, has had an affair; grandma has a hoarding problem. The cremation of the nuclear family illusion is a cornerstone of literature, especially when it’s hastened by one of those unavoidable core gatherings: weddings, births, funerals. But what happens when there was never any illusion to start with; when the story begins in the ashes?

The delight of Brodie Crellin’s accomplished, surprising debut lies in the way it wrestles with this question, and in its depiction of a family that fails to meet any conventional definition of the word. With a cutting eye and wry humour, Crellin finds fantastic power in the story of three maladjusted people reeling in the face of death, whose relationships to one another are endlessly confronting and complex.

There is friendless Patch, riddled with anxiety, who bursts into tears at the memory of the postman’s suicide and falls victim to a terrible haircut. There is Patch’s father, Robin, who is “gay, yes, mostly, but mutable”. And there is Jude, her domineering, malevolently competent cousin, a playwright who “loves to make an entrance”. They’re bound by the newly deceased Mary: Robin’s ex, Patch’s mother, and Jude’s aunt – a woman who “[didn’t] have a problem with gay men” but was lukewarm on lesbians. Orbiting this “isosceles”, as Jude calls it, is Juliette, Jude’s gleefully moneyed mother, and Mel, Mary’s neighbour. Various other characters swing in and out, all fully realised no matter how brief their appearances, my favourite of which was Mary’s poor, forgotten “empath” labrador, Leonard.

The stage is set, as Jude cruises in from Naples, for a fraught collision of past and present. As the funeral draws closer and tensions simmer, Crellin juggles the minutiae of death – chopping vegetables, arranging memorial photos – with fragmented recollections of messy family history. It’s rare to read a novel that can skip in and out of so many points of view and keep the different styles of narration intact. Yet even with regular flashbacks, A Sense of Occasion feels remarkably natural thanks to Crellin’s light touch, especially in the arch, zippy dialogue. There are shades of classic mid-century stories, particularly Dorothy Baker’s Cassandra at the Wedding, and some of the caustic social wit of Edward St Aubyn’s Melrose chronicles, but the boldness feels entirely modern.

It’s a joy, too, to read fiction that understands sex so well, and is neither sentimental nor sleazy. Crellin conveys the importance of sex as a vehicle for each character’s foibles and desires; as a shadowy place where so much can be manipulated and communicated. The book summons up a kaleidoscope of erotic experience across the spectrum, sometimes hot and sometimes ridiculous, including a quasi-incestuous relationship rendered with nuance and consideration.

If the novel leans a little hard on Jude and her mother, Juliette, for its class critiques, it’s easily forgiven on account of just how much fun it is to watch these characters crash into each other, and for the deftly nasty one-liners that they toss out. “Patch lacked the confidence conferred by a private education,” Jude thinks smugly. “But she could also say that Patch was simply less intelligent.” And yet the story never veers into mean-spirited satire, largely thanks to Patch herself, the grief-stricken daughter, who is the heartbeat of the novel. Perennially misunderstood and underestimated – including by her own mother, when she was alive – Patch is awkward but raw, a keen observer of herself and others.

There is immense pleasure and vitality – and ultimately a great deal of tenderness – in A Sense of Occasion’s depiction of flawed, strange people who love badly, and can’t help but get in the way of themselves over and over again. After all, as George Bernard Shaw wrote, “If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”

Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.