Going beyond men behaving sadly to deliver a stylish debut

'This novel," says a note directly below a list of acknowledgements to various friends and acquaint- ances, "is about the way adolescence is absurdly extended in this age of great complacency. It is entirely fictional. The hopeless chancers and cloying fools who populate the book are no reflection upon those who know the author". But does the author protest too much?

There are enough references to specific bars, restaurants and clubs located mainly in Edinburgh's New Town to raise some question as to how much distinguishes these fictional ongoings from the real world of Indigo Yard, the Tapas Tree and Po Na Na, whose bouncers Stewart Hennessey thanks for "knowing how to throw a man out of a nightclub repeatedly without damaging him".

Hennessey has, one assumes, "been there, done that", but thankfully he is smart enough to know that a litany of drink, drug and sex anecdotes does not, in itself, make a good novel. So he pours a large measure of irony into the stories of best pals Rich (Richard) and Simes (Simon), and Denny (Denise, Rich's sister), and offers an ever-widening perspective that reveals them as thirtysomething children for whom the wake-up/grow-up call is long overdue. The sharking, shag-obsessed, smart-alec antics of Rich and Simes are tiresome at first, but it turns out they're not too keen on them either, they just don't see any alternative.

Most of the novel's characters seem to command large salaries working in the media, computer programming, advertising - jobs in which ephemerality is king, work and play melt into each other and play is the bit that matters. Rich and Simes are where Trainspotting meets Men Behaving Badly, only not so mature. Again, Hennessey seems well aware of the dangers of rerunning Irvine Welsh scenarios among chattering-class types, and in one section sends his heroes off to Pilton for some drugs so that they - and we - can be reminded that Begbie and Sick Boy they most certainly are not. When hard reality bites it leaves such mutual assurances as, for example, that "women are all bitches" and "bitches are sexy" ringing somewhat hollow.

The women in the book, on the other hand, while also wallowing in what Denise aptly calls "the mire" - a "big illusory party" at which "we've learned that nothing is important and everyone else is as desperate as ourselves" - seem to have a better grip on the notion that there are bigger issues in life than scoring and tripping. Maybe that biological ticking sound makes all the difference.

But then Rich falls - no, seriously - in love, with the seemingly unattainable Lee-Ann, the kind of assertive no-nonsense goddess that men have fantasised will sort them and their laundry out ever since she, or someone like her, first outperformed them at Standard Grade. She offers stability, significance, continuity from one generation to the next. To Simes and his sister, Rich defines his feelings thus: "I just want to go to Ikea with Lee-Ann" - an admission which it takes an expedition to said furniture emporium to expose as an especially shallow version of the truth.

To himself, Rich is more honest about what he's looking for: "constancy and depth". "You can't get that in the modern world Now it's the vagaries that get to be the constants; urban anonymity, moving about, the sense that there are always more possibilities, maybe better chances, a life half-lived while we wonder what we are worth, what we want, what we can pull off, how we feel, how we should feel, are we missing the glamorous party which television tells us is on?"

Ah, now we're talking. Hennessey turns what could be a throwaway tale of laddish excess into a critique of a lifestyle defined by too many choices and not enough time to make them. He writes with tremendous energy and delivers some excellent lines, supporting the manic comedy with just enough acute observation to give it edge. When, in the last third, he switches to a nightmare scenario in which Denise, on holiday in Thailand, is faced with the prospect of a prison sentence on trumped-up charges, he is in overdrive, and the plot moves like a seriously good thriller.

But there are signs of carelessness and a lack of editing. In one passage, Simes is fooled into thinking he has made pregnant a girl whose face and name he can't even recollect: the 14-page joke is telegraphed from the outset and adds nothing to the novel as a whole. Even the set-piece in Ikea could have been tighter. But the theme of people out of their depth and searching for the shoreline is the novel's saving grace. In "the mire", says Denise - a psychotherapist, so she should know - what you learn is "how to be lonely and do damage". Exploiting other people sexually and emotionally is ultimately just a way of hurting yourself. It's an old story but Hennessey tells it with style.

Drowning in the Shallows By Stewart Hennessey(Review, #6.99) Reviewed by James Robertson

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