Bad Behaviour (Sheila Flanagan)***

Bad Behaviour was difficult to read at first. Sheila O’Flanagan’s style of writing seemed clunky and her characters were horrible. But I stuck with it and I’m glad I did because despite a disappointing beginning, I ended up really liking it.

The clunkiness stopped bothering me after about five chapters and there were nearly forty chapters altogether. And O’Flanagan’s style probably isn’t that clunky really. All authors will have their own personal style, and when you come upon a writer with a new style or at least a style that’s different from the last few books you read, it can take you a while to get used to it. You could argue that I wasn’t so much getting used to the style as getting anaesthetised to it but anaesthetic really isn’t such a bad thing. My boyfriend had an anaesthetic when he had his operation and he actually ended up having quite a nice time during the operation and now he’s all better and much happier (and much better at football though he was brilliant to start with) and he probably wouldn’t be quite as happy if he had a memory of complete and total agony during the operation. So once I was anesthetised to the style I enjoyed reading the book and after a while the style just didn’t hurt me anymore. I actually liked it and a bit of clunkiness can actually add to the comedy scenes.

There was still a problem with the characters though. Most of them just weren’t very nice people, and that too can make a book difficult to read. Darcey, the heroine, comes across as completely cold and unfriendly. As you read the book, you learn that she isn’t like that really, and if she is occasionally a little bit reserved, you can kind of see why. For about the first third of the book, I really disliked Darcey. It’s great she’s so good at her job but she didn’t seem to care about people as human beings at all. Maybe it would have been better if O’Flanagan had made it clear earlier how nice Darcey really was. The book was mostly from her point of view. It’s possible to show a character behaving in a cold and unfriendly manner, whilst at the same time making it clear that she’s lovely and caring underneath it all. This was something that came across very strongly later on but I wish it had happened sooner.

Also, Darcey did come over as a bit of a slut. She travels to different countries as part of her job and she seems to have a shag buddy in every country. Darcey would prefer me to describe it as ‘sex with no strings attached’ but isn’t that exactly what a shag buddy is? I don’t think there’s anything wrong as such with wanting sex but not wanting a relationship – considering Darcey’s relationship experience, you can’t really blame her. But the problem I have it is that it does cast doubt on her ability to do her job. We’re supposed to believe she’s brilliant at her job, travelling to strange places and getting people to sign contracts. But when we find out she’s actually got a bloke in every country, you have to wonder, did she really get those contracts through her brilliant people skills, or was it more because of who she’s shagging?

There are also sections of the book which are from the point of view of her former best friend Nieve, who stole Darcey’s boyfriend Aidan the night he was going to propose to her. Nieve is just a totally self-centred cow who believes money is the root of all happiness. It’s just very difficult to like her at all. Maybe around the middle of the book you might develop some sympathy for her for being so clueless about what life should really be like, and definitely at the end it was impossible not to feel for her. But it’s a bit late by then. And it really annoyed me that the character of Mary, who wasn’t a big character at all but who did take care of Nieve when she needed someone, totally disappeared as soon as she’d played her role in the plot. If they’d at least stayed in contact, it would have helped me to think more positively of Nieve.

Aidan, like all fictional Aidans, is the unreliable type, but unlike the other Aidans I’ve read about he doesn’t have a very good reason for his behaviour towards Darcey. He didn’t seem that bad a person, he’s quite weak and useless and I usually really go for that a man. But things were never really quite resolved for him. There’s another main character called Neil who comes to work with Darcey, and she spends most of the book wondering whether she likes either of them, and if so, how much and in what way. Neil does at least seem a lot more reliable than Aidan, but likeable? He seems a bit boring to me but in some ways he was probably the most convincing character in the book. I’m sure there are loads of people around like Neil.

Darcey’s friend Anna was maybe the worst of the main characters. She’s very nice but she seemed to snap back and forth quite unconvincingly between being Darcey’s friend and Darcey’s HR manager. I’m sure in the job world that sort of relationship can be quite complicated, and it might have made an interesting story/subplot if O’Flanagan had tried to develop it. But she didn’t. And I have to say, I was actually on Darcey’s side when Darcey told her a secret about her past. Anna was hurt that Darcey hadn’t told her before. But why should she? Why should she tell her friend about everything that’s ever happened to her? Anna really seemed more like a plot device than a character most of the time but she did seem like a very likeable plot device.

The plot took a while to get going, but once it had, it was very satisfying and involving with all sorts of strange twists and turns. Parts of it were very exciting, and until very near the end, I not only had no idea how things were going to end up for Darcey and Nieve and the others, I wasn’t even sure how I wanted things to end up. Usually, when I read a book, I know pretty early on who I want the heroine to end up with (if anyone). But in this book, I just wasn’t sure. However, by the end, I was completely happy with how things turned out. I thought it was amazing the way O’Flanagan could have written so much about her characters, yet have given so little away. And it was all so compelling, wondering what was going to happen, and so convincing when it finally did. If O’Flanagan had cut the first few chapters, maybe I’d have given the book four stars. It’s all so cleverly done.

O’Flanagan chose to give quite a lot of detail about the work Darcey and Nieve do, which might have been interesting for some people, but I found it rather boring and I had trouble following it. I’m not an office person, I never will be an office person even if I do end up working in an office, and it just seemed like a totally alien world and a terminally dull one. I didn’t really care about Darcey’s and Nieve’s jobs. I was happy for them that they were doing something they loved but I don’t really care about what people are, I’m more interested in who they are. There’s a whole lot more to people than what they’re prepared to do for money. Well, unless you’re Nieve, that is.