From England and India
In Whatever Makes You Happy (London: Bloomsury; 2008) William Sutcliffe explores the inter-relationships between three middle-aged women and their three sons, all in their thirties. An anxiety of growing apart from their sons combined with a loss of direction after occupying such a pivotal role in the young men's lives prompts them to embark on a collective experiment that terrifies them all. The premise is simple: Three women, terrified of growing apart from their sons and indignant at being left out in the cold after sacrificing the best part of thirty years to their families' happiness, they decide to spring a surprise visit on their sons, and refuse to leave until they have spent a week in each others' company and have managed to help them move forward. Matt's mother is horrified when she discovers the smutty content of the magazine Balls! for which her son has decided to devote his journalistic career and, combined with a terror that he is pursuing the wrong type of women, covertly accompanies him to Leicester Square aftershave launch parties, realising that it is now her duty as a mother to reinstate some of the values that she sought to instill in him in childhood. Upon learning that her son, Paul, is gay and is now living in what appears, at first glance, to be a gay commune, Helen begins to rebuild their relationship and come to terms with the obstacles in her own past. And Gillian embarks on a journey from London to Edinburgh to rescue her son Daniel from himself after a painful and isolating break-up from his girlfriend. Sutcliffe's comic portrayal of the three inter-woven stories is surprisingly touching without resorting to sentimentality. He manages to capture the enormity of the maternal instinct. And the poignant boredom with which children respond to that boundless love. "They had watched one another's babies grow through childhood into adolescence and adulthood, while slowly seeing each other getting old. They had cajoled, advised and comforted one another through the cement mixer of parenthood. Proximity and shared experience, year by year, had knitted their lives together."
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