*The Last Boat by John Pollock (Anthony Blond, 1958)
Another relentlessly dark and morbid novel by John Pollock, but once again enlivingly laced with his dark humor and keen observation of human behavior at its most desperately alcholic-besodden level.
Some bureaucratic nitwits in the British foreign office decide to stage a trial evacuation of British residents on a small (fictitious) Italian island named Pizza (of course). The off-season weather on Pizza is cold and dreary and the island is populated only by about a dozen British expats (aka outcasts) and the few enterprising locals who earn a meager living housing and feeding them, and keeping them liquored up. We're introduced to this colorful but damaged and self-destructive (madness, alcoholism, nymphomania, and homosexuality) group of characters, and watch as they attempt to pull themselves together and board the unseaworthy boat that has been commandeered for their exodus. With the help (?) of a minor British magistrate, who sees this mission as an opportunity for advancement in the diplomatic corps, and the locals, who sense an opportunity to rid their community of these degenerates and make some money doing so, the boat is finally populated and sets out to sea, where it almost immediately sinks. Everyone on board drowns.
I continue to be intrigued by John Pollock -- this is the third book of his I've read -- and wish I could learn something about him. All his books share the same acidic and anti-social world view expressed with malevolent glee. He writes unsentimentally and brutally about outcasts, those men and women who, for one reason or another, have voluntarily or forcibly stepped off the good high road we are all told to walk along, and find themselves crawling in the gutter.