“People were capable of being many things at once.” (Sarah Gilmartin, Service)

/ madamebibilophile

I was a bit wary approaching Service by Sarah Gilmartin (2023) as I’d not long finished an issue-driven novel which I thought never quite managed to create characters who existed believably beyond the issue itself. Service has been described as a #MeToo novel, looking as it does at sexual assault and the structures that enable predators to not only get away with it, but thrive. However, when I saw it in my much-beloved charity bookshop during Cathy’s Reading Ireland Month it seemed perfect timing, and I also remembered that Susan had rated it.

The story is told from the point of view of three characters in alternating chapters.

Hannah, now in her thirties and selling her home as she and her husband divorce, looking back on time when she was a student and a waitress at T, a swanky restaurant reaping the rewards of boomtime Dublin;

“And there was Daniel, of course, we all loved Daniel. The skill, the swagger, the hair, even the naff red bandana that he sometimes wore during prep. We were in awe of him, of the fact that he didn’t seem to care about anything except the food. Serious cooking and good times, that was the dream we sold at T, over and over again.”

Daniel, the celebrity chef who oversaw T, now accused on Facebook of rape by an employee and facing criminal trial;

“Tomorrow the farce begins in earnest. Tomorrow I’ll see that ungrateful wench in person for the first time since she sat at her computer and pressed destroy.”

And his wife Julie, there throughout it all and trying to keep a home running for their teenage sons.

“I knew that you were not the kind of man who would come in the door of an evening and ask about your family. You were too full of your own stories, your voice set to megaphone inside your head, while the rest of us whispered asides. I knew this and I still said yes.”

This isn’t a he said/she said thriller – the way the stories and voices are presented it’s clear that Daniel did it. I thought this was a clever decision, as it frees Gilmartin instead to really focus on the characters’ lives within the various systems of enablement surrounding Daniel. He doesn’t see himself as a predator: why would he, when he is venerated – his toxic, controlling behaviour lauded?

“In that long, hot room that was fuelled by aggression and banter and occasional lines of speed, everything was sexualized.”

Daniel’s narrative is unreliable of course, and Gilmartin cleverly presents it in a way that the reader isn’t sure if he believes it himself. Is he consciously lying, or does he not recognise his actions as rape? He’s deluded enough to think all women want him really, and whether they say ‘no’ to him is a matter of indifference – like everything else they say. In a misogynistic culture where women are commodified and discardable the minute they reach thirty, their careers in front-of-house dependent not on skills or talent but on the approval of the straight-male gaze, where his own wife refers to ‘sluts’, he probably sees what he does as his entitlement.

I’ve seen some readers saying they vacillated with regard to the characters, but this wasn’t my experience with Hannah or Daniel. Where I did change somewhat was with Julie. I found her internalised misogyny infuriating, along with her astounding naivete that somehow a man who has plenty of women willing to sleep with him would therefore not assault anyone.

“How did I not know my husband was a predator? Somehow, I have no answer, beyond some ferocious thought, that all these years have meant nothing, marriage to mirage.”

“How do you weigh up the infinite exhibits of a decades-long marriage?”

But ultimately I saw her as a victim in the situation too, and it is Julie who pinpoints a fundamental societal attitude, so long ingrained, which silences women:

“I always had that ability, learned at such a young age – not to make a scene, not to dramatise, not to look for attention. Only the wrong kind of girls looked for attention.”

There is real tension in Hannah’s narrative as you know what is going to happen while desperately wishing it wouldn’t, and I thought the scene was handled sensitively and entirely non-gratuitously. The immediate fallout and enduring trauma are both believably portrayed.

When I initially read Service, I wondered if a limitation was the voices not being overly distinct from one another, but now, a few days on, I find Daniel’s voice has really stayed with me, the insidious toad (except I quite like toads). So unfortunately through not being able to shake him off I’ve realised my mini-criticism was mistaken!

The ending offered some hope while not being entirely unrealistic which I appreciated, not needing unrelenting bleak narratives right now. In an Author’s Note, Gilmartin explains that the barriers in the current legal system mean that the trial in the book would be unlikely to even occur in real life.

“A girl like you.

It could be said in many different ways.”

22 thoughts on ““People were capable of being many things at once.” (Sarah Gilmartin, Service)”

  3. There’s something of a theme currently of me too, coercive control, psychological abuse being portrayed in fiction recently. It’s important to keep the narrative alive and address those legal issues, even if not everyone wants to immerse in the subject. I think it’s a small sign of progress.

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  4. I quite liked this, but like you, I found the voices a little samey. I was surprised to see it included in the recent Best 100 Books of the last 25 years in the Irish Times, but I am interested to see what Gilmartin does next.

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    • I sometimes think that lists along those lines which appear are a bit skewed towards more recent publications as they are more present in people’s minds. I think it would be worth doing a ‘best of… but not including the last 10 years’ list!

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  5. Pingback: It’s Reading Ireland Month 2025!

  6. I haven’t got on with Gilmartin in the past so unlikely to read this, however, I think it’s important that #MeToo stories continue to get told by all sorts of people in all sorts of ways.

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  9. I don’t think this novel is for me, given the focus on sexual assault, but the following point from your opening struck a chord with me. “….I’d not long finished an issue-driven novel which I thought never quite managed to create characters who existed believably beyond the issue itself.” This is such a problem with many issue-driven novels, which seem to have been written primarily for the book group market. The characters simply exist to serve the plot – they’re often ciphers lacking ant real sense of depth, so the way you’ve expressed it hits the nail on the head for me!

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    • I’d never thought that they’d been written with the book group market in mind, but it makes total sense!

      I’m going to completely misquote him now, but I remember years ago Jez Butterworth being interviewed about issues driving his work and he said something along the lines of “I write plays, not pamphlets.” That’s it really – I don’t mind issues being explored but I think it’s worth keeping in mind whether it’s best suited to an essay or a novel…

      I do have a preference for character-driven stories so I am biased!

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  10. That voice like a megaphone was such a great image to my thinking. Then, to read that you, as a reader, found Daniel’s voice to be rather like that, after you’d finished reading. That’s the mark of a well-drawn character. So you were wise to give another socio-political story a chance after all; some are thoughtful and well-crafted and others seem too sculpted, too directed (too market-aware, as Jacqui says), but avoiding another in a category that’s recently disappointed doesn’t guarantee success either. We just have to keep reading! hee hee

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