Rob Doyle’s latest novel, Cameo, is a larky autofiction that sends up the literary world in the culture war era. The book centres on Ren Duka, a gazillion-selling Dublin novelist whose life story forms a long novel cycle summarised throughout the text. Duka leads a jet-set life of peril, mixing with drug dealers, terrorists and spies, before developing a crack habit and a penchant for threesomes in Paris.
The satire is wicked, with writerly pettiness providing constant comedy. Abducted in Iraq, Duka records propaganda for Islamic State and uses the opportunity to denounce his literary rivals. Free-floating monologues from voices connected to Duka punctuate the action, including an actor bitter about no longer playing him on screen and a punk novelist akin to Virginie Despentes. The narrative also includes excerpts from a memoir and snippets from a near-future novel.
Doyle’s deadpan register, caught between bewilderment and weariness, generates terrific momentum. At one point, Duka reinvents himself as an anti-woke comedian and becomes a rightwing talking head. The novel’s energy lies in its larky details, though there is a kernel of emotion when ‘Rob Doyle’ rings his sister for help during a drug-induced breakdown in Berlin, only to find her still unhappy about her portrayal in a previous book.
Overall, Cameo is a slippery jeu d’esprit that may leave readers wondering whether Duka’s improbably storied narrative is a comic riposte to accusations that autofiction is navel-gazing. While some may find it harder to pin down than Doyle’s previous work, the novel offers a fantasy of literary celebrity that is both entertaining and thought-provoking.
