Porter’s writing is quick and mischievous, a little boy whose strange and delightful antics capture our attention, who is somehow at the same time sage beyond his years, able to wrap his head around complex emotional sensitivities and themes – just like the eponymous character in Lanny. Porter plays with our expectations of how language tells a story; his words dance across the page untethered to neat lines of print, deftly shaping characters with bubbling, complex emotional lives, the plot built up through fragmented perspectives. Words pool around Lanny, a precocious and odd child, described through the eyes of those around him. It is the evocative language used in delightfully unorthodox ways that drives the story, prompting a reflection upon language as a communicative and cultural artefact. At the same time I love how Porter can prod into the most personal of themes without ever inciting provocation, creating a story that is sensitive and moving.
Lanny is brimming with emotion – Porter creates real characters who invite empathy. It is the simple frankness of Porter’s language that expresses how people think; thoughts are half-formed, barely articulated as characters observe the world around them. We watch alongside Lanny’s mum as Lanny “[dances]”, and “[sings]”, and “[hangs] upside down”. Their experiences feel visceral because Porter sheds all flowery language and pushes us deep into their heads, with clipped sentences that occasionally disjoint themselves into a new thought. When Lanny’s dad jolts awake “fists clenched”, he declares the proximity of the threat: “Someone in the house.”. He flies from aggressive – “come on then you flying fuck” – to afraid – “I have no actual defensive power” – in a single clause, and we feel the torrent of his emotions as if we were there. Mundane language creates emotional tension, both parents struggling to process what happened, able only to say “I don’t think I’ve ever been more frightened”. Their inability to articulate themselves beyond this feels human, as is the fact that the conflict is resolved with an offer to find quiet comfort in each other, when one asks, “Shall we spoon?” / “Please.”.
The human element of Porter’s novel brings emotion to the fore in his writing, but in Lanny, it’s Porter’s bold choice to pair this with an experimental manipulation of form that creates a compelling narrative. The fact that Lanny is only seen through other’s eyes adds to his characterisation as “all in his own head”, this absence from reality culminating in his literal disappearance from the village. Porter mirrors absence with white space, punctuating the page with tension-filled marks, while rushed run-on sentences reflect the frenzied panic of the search, with a breathless “NO NO NO stop it I can’t believe”. In the background, the pulsing force of village conversations heightens the sense of urgency and mystifies Lanny even further. Snippets of conversation layered upon each other – literally, with Porter’s unique choice of typeface – reinforces vitality, building up into a coherent picture of Lanny’s disappearance, subtle in revealing the story.
These daring experiments allow Lanny to take a step back and meditate upon the English language itself; we see the voyeuristic perspective of Dead Papa Toothwort as he revels in language: “he swims in it, he gobbles it up…”. Toothwort is inhuman; English to him is delightful in its cacophony of mundanities, from the domestic tribulations of “clean forgot milk” to weather-related musings in “autumn’s a brutal surgeon”. The alien wonder of language is reinforced by the dancing typeface, and this distance allows an appreciation of inherent beauty found in words, to delight in meaning. “Autumn” as “a brutal surgeon” taken literally is absurd, yet it has metaphorical power in describing harsh weather. Simple phrases allow us to infer so much, packed with rich contexts. The use of colloquialisms reminds us how language is a unique reflection of culture in an English village. Finally, Porter meditates upon how language simultaneously creates and inhibits communication, highlighting the disjunct between what we think and say – when Lanny’s mum wants to scream “I hate hate hate you”, all she musters instead is to speak “calmly and kindly”. There remains so much that can never be adequately expressed socially, and language, as a fundamentally communicative tool, perhaps reveals its shortcomings not in expression, but in its need to conform to social expectation. This is a richly layered book which gives us much to consider; overall, a deeply satisfying read.
