Irish author Rob Doyle returns with a mischievous and metafictional new novel that gleefully skewers the contemporary literary scene and the fraught landscape of culture wars. 'Cameo', published by W&N for £20, is a dizzying hall of mirrors that follows the improbable, jet-setting life of a fictional bestselling Dublin novelist.
A Vertiginous Literary Game
Following his previous novel, 'Threshold', and the 2022 memoir 'Autobibliography', Doyle continues his autofictional explorations but with a sharper, more satirical edge. The book centres on the outlandish adventures of Ren Duka, a gazillion-selling author whose life provides the fodder for his own epic novel cycle. The summaries of these fictional books form the bulk of 'Cameo', creating a layered, recursive narrative.
Duka is no ordinary writer. His life is a cartoonish fantasy of literary celebrity, involving perilous encounters with drug dealers, terrorists, and spies. He serves time for tax evasion, develops a crack habit, indulges in Parisian threesomes, and, in perhaps the most unlikely twist, makes a dramatic return to the Catholicism he long ago abandoned. This is the writer recast as an improbable action hero.
Wicked Satire and Writerly Pettiness
The novel's energy derives from its larky details and a winningly deadpan narrative voice, caught between bewilderment and weariness. Doyle employs a matter-of-fact present tense, spiced with hyperbolic intensifiers—he has a particular fondness for the word 'satanic'—to generate terrific momentum.
The satire is often wicked and timely. At one point, Duka reinvents himself as an anti-woke comedian and becomes a sought-after right-wing talking head. 'Whenever an interlocutor, invariably in firmer command of facts and statistics, seems poised to get the better of him, Ren accuses them of racism. If he feels he is in a particularly tight corner, he accuses them of paedophilia,' Doyle writes. The episode culminates in a contrite article for the New Statesman titled 'I'm Sorry'.
Writerly jealousy is a constant source of comedy. Even while being forced to record propaganda for Islamic State after an abduction in Iraq, Duka uses the platform to denounce his literary rivals, including those barely known outside Dublin's publishing circles.
A Cast of Voices and a Kernel of Emotion
The main narrative is punctuated by monologues from a chorus of voices connected to Duka. These include a bitter actor who once portrayed him on screen, a punk novelist reminiscent of Virginie Despentes, and, naturally, a character named Rob Doyle. The book also features excerpts from other fictional works, including a memoir about a childhood story written from the Predator's perspective and a near-future novel about a cab driver in a war-torn Europe with alien sightings and AI-worshipping cartel leaders.
Amid the relentless satire, there are rare moments of raw emotion. One standout scene sees 'Rob Doyle', on the brink of a drug-induced breakdown in Berlin, call his sister for help. The call ends disastrously as she remains hurt by her portrayal in a previous book, and he, consumed by his own crisis, remains oblivious to her pain.
Overall, such vulnerable moments are fewer than in Doyle's earlier work, as if the author is taking a break from casting himself as the outright 'bad guy'. This makes 'Cameo' a slippery, harder-to-pin-down jeu d'esprit. It reads as a comic riposte to accusations that autofiction is inherently navel-gazing, by pushing its conceit to deliberately absurd, globe-trotting extremes.
While some readers may find its relentless reflexivity and tonal shifts challenging, the novel's inventive energy and sharp cultural observations are undeniable. True to form, one suspects Rob Doyle wouldn't want it any other way.
