The front cover of the original version bore just the title and name of author in black print against a white background. The design was meant to reflect the bleak setting for the story, a neglected housing estate on the periphery of an anonymous but assuredly uncelebrated English city. There is little bleakness to the style of writing, however, which manages to retain reader attention throughout. This is just as well because, although a work of fiction, The Zoo Keeper is also a vehicle for some fairly polemical sociological stuff.

So exactly which category of fiction does the book fit into? What is it about? As a ‘man meets woman and they have a relationship’ story, it is slow to get going, a little lumpy in parts, and the lead character needs the occasional prompt from the wings by the author. In any case, the relationship collapses, later to be replaced by one apparently having three players. Between these events sits a chapter having nothing to do with affairs of the heart, one made up of a series of question-and-answer sessions which the protagonist holds in his head. The sense of social wrong conveyed within that chapter is supplemented by a rage that is present for most of the book, simmering in the text but sometimes spilling across the page. To return to the opening question, the book does not slide neatly into any slot. There is no category of sociological fiction; perhaps too uncommon is the script like this one which, as it picks away at middle class attitudes to poverty, launches a frontal attack on the community development industry.

Ellis Carmichael, a fellow in his forties, moves into a high-rise tower block on a run-down council estate on the edge of town. It is a deliberate choice, and he is satisfied with the location. After a period spent decorating his flat, he sets forth to join the community. By chance, he is in at the birth of a small group formed under the guidance of a community development agency to give local voice to a proposed scheme for revamping the estate’s awful centre. But the newcomer’s mission goes beyond his wishing to place his education (he is a recent graduate) at the disposal of the community. At a dinner party of university types, Carmichael explains how he is engaged in ‘experiential observation’, a method by which the researcher lives the life and feels the pain of the subject people without recourse to a comfortable fall-back position. It’s all part of his investigation into the Big Why: the why of poverty.

Enter the character of Suzie Gardeen. The woman is younger than Carmichael by some ten years. Although granted no narrated point of view, she is well able to express herself by direct speech. Gardeen is attached to the local outreach office of the aforementioned agency, training to be a community development worker. When the time comes to write up her assignment, she asks Carmichael for help, which he is only too pleased to provide. The ensuing relationship is no whirlwind – the two have to wait until Chapter Four before making it between the sheets – but the impression is they then have fun.

Suzie Gardeen seems to possess a knack for being in the right place at the right time as far as career moves are concerned. Within two years of formal employment she is in charge of the outreach office, and itching for more. Meanwhile, Carmichael takes to brooding on how her work at the agency gives weight to his emerging idea that poverty management is intrinsically repressive. When he considers his own career, applying for jobs to appease the social benefits people, he makes the discovery that age has caught up with him. Any ambitions he may have held for processing his research are dashed by a university department in the throws of transformation from seeking truths to supplying funders with what they want to hear. He also has to endure Gardeen’s griping about his doley lifestyle. It is only a matter of time, and an unprompted diatribe from Carmichael, till the relationship is no more.

Our man begins, or rather continues, a steady decline. An attempt at patching things up with Gardeen degenerates into a verbal dogfight about the role of community development; elsewhere, his advocacy on behalf of residents of the estate proves no match for civic bureaucracy; and then a class of students shows up in his imagination. He treats the figmental clutch to a series of mini-lectures after each of which he avails himself to questions. The polemic comes to the boil and the questioners turn on him, at which juncture he switches off the lights and goes home.

During a bout of flu, Carmichael rummages through the highs and lows of his life. We find out he left behind a reasonable living to enter university as a mature student, where he reckons he saw the true light. The reflective theme is broken before it goes on for too long by the return of Gardeen.

In an apparent switch of telling, the reader is there with Gardeen as she tries to prevent the drive-away theft of her car by clinging to the bonnet. The description, though, is Carmichael’s perceived version of events that have put her in hospital. His impulsive visit to see the patient is followed a few weeks later by an invitation from Gardeen to call in at the main office of the agency, where now she reigns supreme. Since there is no reference to the earlier relationship, Carmichael believes she may be sounding him out for some part-time protection as a result of her ordeal. A further invitation, to her home, reveals that Gardeen is applying for the position of head of a new regional community development agency. She acknowledges a lack of intellectual muscle and makes him an offer he can’t refuse but one which he has to consult his imaginary faces about nonetheless. The droll conclusion to the story, reached by an undefined time leap, lets readers work some bits out for themselves.

And the zoo keeper reference? Well, the name Gardeen is derived from the French word gardien (or it is for this tale), one meaning of which is keeper. In her rise through the ranks, Suzie shortens her first name to Su so as to come across as more managerial. When it is clear that the first relationship cannot be mended, and he patently has come to mistrust the job she does, Carmichael accuses Gardeen of becoming zoo keeper both in name and occupation. Get it?

Precisely because the story is related from the protagonist’s subjective slant on things, there is opportunity for the reader to stand back and smile. An example is when Carmichael and a middle-aged female member of his campaign group set up a table at a Fun Day event. Carmichael takes along some council plans while the housewife offers home-made cooking. No guessing which proves the more popular and raises the most money.

More significantly, the format allows a choice of interpretations. With regards to the relationship which the story rides on, is there reason to believe that Carmichael befriends a community development worker in order to help his research? Or, conversely, does the relationship act as a convenient toehold for an ambitious and manipulative woman?

At one point, Gardeen tells Carmichael he does not belong on the estate that he has made home. Certainly his wish to present the case for the estate class is at odds with his attitude to the people themselves. These are represented in vignettes, usually in unflattering terms. When they enter into dialogue, the English many of them speak is marked by dropped letters (the book’s opening line gives the flavour). Maybe Carmichael is driven by things other than a compassion for the poor, such as his resentment of the middle class.

Something else: his assaults on community development correlate suspiciously closely with Gardeen’s steps up the promotional ladder. Is his argument based on the experiental observation he talks about, or is he simply miffed at Gardeen’s easy success?

It may reasonably be accepted that the two central characters start off with genuine intentions of helping, in their different ways, to bring about some real change within a distressed stratum of society. Both come to realise they are caught up in a system that will grind on remorselessly and completely unaffected by their personal inputs. Whereas Carmichael lets the situation get to him, Gardeen makes it work for her. One-nil to pragmatism, yeh?

So it goes. Carmichael leads - it’s his story - though we don’t necessarily have to follow. How, then, are we to judge the quality of the message that the book is bent on delivering?

The gist of the argument as presented through the book’s prime character is that traditional poverty has been restyled to become social deprivation - a poverty not just of income but also of hope and ambition. Society has always had a use for its poor (‘cannon fodder in times of war, factory fodder during industrial growth’), until late twentieth century affluence acted to drive poverty into near obsolescence. Then, as the burgeoning middle class (for which read an increasing proportion of the electorate) looked like it might be running out of things to keep it busy, poverty was brought out of retirement. The class that at one time would be sent to serve empire is now directed towards social colonisation of the nation’s poorest citizens. In short, poverty is cultivated and maintained in order to produce jobs for an underoccupied middle class.

Some several million citizens destined to be socially deprived are kept in clearly delineated reserves of poverty typified by crumbling inner cities and soulless peripheral estates. Here, in these places that could serve no other purpose, levels of deprivation are controlled through welfare dependency, and carefully monitored. Whenever the situation is deemed to be deteriorating, more professionals are parachuted in. Only, things never get any better. Social deprivation, you see, is the bountiful goose laying the golden eggs.

Accordingly, the function of the community development crowd is not to carry out any proper developing but to ‘inform the community of its role, that what is being experienced is definitely poverty’. Carmichael has no doubts about community development: ‘of all the enterprises that feed off poverty, it’s the most hypocritical.’ So there.

Carmichael’s social philosophising would seem to get off to a bad start. In an effort to impress the theory-challenged Gardeen, he strays from his own intellectual terra firma, though he readily owns up to his folly. This device by the author is perhaps to give later pronouncements the required persuasive quality.

The invective isn’t restricted to community development workers. Academics who spend their time recycling unshared poverty research have some mouldy fruit thrown their way, as do normally innocuous social anthropologists. Local councils, health authorities, the education system and the police all come in for a trouncing, too, with something left for the politicians. Ward councillors are portrayed as cliché-spouting stereotypes (is there any other sort of ward councillor?) and, on the wider stage, the ‘Order of the New’ is described - perhaps not for the first time – as ‘a political project reduced to muzak’. The Great Visionary becomes an Empty Messiah (who on earth can that possibly be?) while, following the 2001 election, the Opposition replaces the comedian at their helm with a tailor’s dummy.

A dedicated Chapter Ten is not sufficient for the message: parts of it are to be found in every chapter. But if the book’s essence had to be gathered up in a single sentence, the right line is perhaps provided by the messenger himself. ‘Social deprivation,’ he tells us with passion, ‘means the systematic suppression of human dignity so that others may benefit.’

Iain Brimswall was born and brought up in Hull, and returned to the city some years ago. The first part of The Zoo Keeper is semi-autobiographical.

A decent enough effort for a first published novel (apparently, two earlier manuscripts for novels failed to make it past the waste bin). The author shows promise despite some awkward flashbacks and fragmentary streams of consciousness which require careful reading. In the first part of the book, the main character is not entirely sure where his quest is leading him; the reader could say the same about the story. Some may find the lectures chapter disrupts the flow. That’s the problem when a story is required to carry such a heavy message load. Indeed, The Zoo Keeper would not look out of place on a student bookshelf. Or by the bed of anyone with a thought for social justice.

April 2004. Revised January 2008.