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grubstlodger's review against another edition
3.0
I can’t remember buying this book, I’m not even sure why I would buy it, nor do I remember putting it on my shelf but it fell out while I was reaching for another one - so I read it. It’s a peculiar and disconcerting experience.
The key to this unnerving tone is the narrator. In the first page we meet a man who claims he isn’t a hypochondriac and has had many jobs but isn’t a failure. He then quickly reflects that he might be something of a hypochondriac, something of a failure and what’s more is fastidious and can’t (or won’t) do anything to change it. This herky-jerky, impression then reflection is typical of the narrator which makes him seem untrustworthy yet intriguing. Another example of the tricksy nature of the narrator is when he describes someone in a way that leads the reader to expect them to be a male when they are in fact female. Nothing particularly comes out of the narrator’s lack of trustworthiness but it makes the whole book off-kilter.
The person he sees about his phantom pains is a Harley Street practitioner called Setter. He is an avuncular man who calms our narrator (later named Victor). He works as a personnel manager in a car firm and is impressed by Setter that he sends an underperforming employee to him. Later, he happens to meet Setter and a party in New York but he is not the confident GP he met before but a man crying over his wife falling out of love with him. In one of the many odd little touches this crying is described as ‘organic’ and is regarded by Victor as completely out of place with a man.
Victor himself is no stranger to marriage trouble, he is married to Jenny, whose mother is sick and a burden to them. It is in his relationship to Jenny that I had the most cause to dislike him. He claims ownership of her and keeps making claims that she loves him back as deeply (though his shifty tone makes us doubt this.) He talks about her like she is a child, often refers to her childlike ways, her innocence and even her simple nature. When he returns from New York and they continue an argument that she should have been by their side, she gets distracted by an elephant walking past outside advertising a circus. It may be the only time I have ever read a book where there is a literal elephant (not quite) in the room.
Victor, Jenny and her mother fall into friendship with Setter and his wife, Emily. It’s a strange friendship as none of them seem to like each other but become friends anyway. It’s almost as if Setter, in particular, is invading their lives. He sets up a club for the unlikeable people of the world that include Victor and Jenny’s mother (but not initially Jenny) and also various people Victor works with and has met. There is a great push in the story to explain how boring and seemingly pointless the club is but how all the members keep going anyway and really seem to enjoy it. This all surrounds the quiet and seemingly benign Setter, who still casts eery shadows around the story.
The more we find out about Setter, the more eery he becomes. He is a self-confessed sadist, who has throughout his life managed to hold back his most sadistic urges. This doesn’t stop him trying to rape his wife when she divorces him however. The rape isn’t carried through as she kicks him in the gonads and the narrator (the author?) states he doesn’t believe that rape is possible because every woman has access to the same technique - a deeply unpleasant notion.
Another deeply unpleasant moment is the bit when Jenny and Victor are on holiday with the Setters and Jenny is phoned and told that her mother has died. Setter describes the newly dead mother as ‘a selfish-bitch’ who wouldn’t give Victor and Jenny space and warns Jenny against being a ‘moping bitch’ and grieving too much. She does grieve a lot, one of the most protracted (and realistic) descriptions of grief I have ever read, throughout the next hundred or so pages. The narrator, Victor gets fed up with her and she starts to have an unrequited crush on Setter.
The plot as described in the blurb kicks in about 70 pages in. One of the people from the group, Sammy, is suspected of killing an old drunk lady and kicking out her eyes. Setter gets close to him, extracts a (possibly false) confession and then buddies up to him, taking him to France.
At the end we discover that Setter tricked Sammy into killing himself, the trip to France being a final glimpse of happiness for the young psychopath. It is also heavily implied that he talked Jenny’s mother into doing the same. As such he gave in to his evil nature but also (so the novel wants you to feel) done it for good reasons and in the kindest way possible. Setter felt it would have been ‘an error of judgement’ to go to heaven, considering the evil within him and so has committed evil deeds to be sent to hell where he feels he belongs.
It’s a gripping yet distasteful book. The characters are not only unlikeable, they are dislikeable. It’s like the narrator (author?) can only see the bad in people. Pamela Hansford Johnson has a sharp way with words, I particularly liked the following description of conversation at a party; “She was eager to get back to a discussion of her psychological problems and mine, preferably hers.” So much of the block is a little unclear though, I had to re-read parts and the worldview encapsulated by the book so oppressive and unpleasant that although I would say it was a good book, it was not one I much enjoyed.
The key to this unnerving tone is the narrator. In the first page we meet a man who claims he isn’t a hypochondriac and has had many jobs but isn’t a failure. He then quickly reflects that he might be something of a hypochondriac, something of a failure and what’s more is fastidious and can’t (or won’t) do anything to change it. This herky-jerky, impression then reflection is typical of the narrator which makes him seem untrustworthy yet intriguing. Another example of the tricksy nature of the narrator is when he describes someone in a way that leads the reader to expect them to be a male when they are in fact female. Nothing particularly comes out of the narrator’s lack of trustworthiness but it makes the whole book off-kilter.
The person he sees about his phantom pains is a Harley Street practitioner called Setter. He is an avuncular man who calms our narrator (later named Victor). He works as a personnel manager in a car firm and is impressed by Setter that he sends an underperforming employee to him. Later, he happens to meet Setter and a party in New York but he is not the confident GP he met before but a man crying over his wife falling out of love with him. In one of the many odd little touches this crying is described as ‘organic’ and is regarded by Victor as completely out of place with a man.
Victor himself is no stranger to marriage trouble, he is married to Jenny, whose mother is sick and a burden to them. It is in his relationship to Jenny that I had the most cause to dislike him. He claims ownership of her and keeps making claims that she loves him back as deeply (though his shifty tone makes us doubt this.) He talks about her like she is a child, often refers to her childlike ways, her innocence and even her simple nature. When he returns from New York and they continue an argument that she should have been by their side, she gets distracted by an elephant walking past outside advertising a circus. It may be the only time I have ever read a book where there is a literal elephant (not quite) in the room.
Victor, Jenny and her mother fall into friendship with Setter and his wife, Emily. It’s a strange friendship as none of them seem to like each other but become friends anyway. It’s almost as if Setter, in particular, is invading their lives. He sets up a club for the unlikeable people of the world that include Victor and Jenny’s mother (but not initially Jenny) and also various people Victor works with and has met. There is a great push in the story to explain how boring and seemingly pointless the club is but how all the members keep going anyway and really seem to enjoy it. This all surrounds the quiet and seemingly benign Setter, who still casts eery shadows around the story.
The more we find out about Setter, the more eery he becomes. He is a self-confessed sadist, who has throughout his life managed to hold back his most sadistic urges. This doesn’t stop him trying to rape his wife when she divorces him however. The rape isn’t carried through as she kicks him in the gonads and the narrator (the author?) states he doesn’t believe that rape is possible because every woman has access to the same technique - a deeply unpleasant notion.
Another deeply unpleasant moment is the bit when Jenny and Victor are on holiday with the Setters and Jenny is phoned and told that her mother has died. Setter describes the newly dead mother as ‘a selfish-bitch’ who wouldn’t give Victor and Jenny space and warns Jenny against being a ‘moping bitch’ and grieving too much. She does grieve a lot, one of the most protracted (and realistic) descriptions of grief I have ever read, throughout the next hundred or so pages. The narrator, Victor gets fed up with her and she starts to have an unrequited crush on Setter.
The plot as described in the blurb kicks in about 70 pages in. One of the people from the group, Sammy, is suspected of killing an old drunk lady and kicking out her eyes. Setter gets close to him, extracts a (possibly false) confession and then buddies up to him, taking him to France.
At the end we discover that Setter tricked Sammy into killing himself, the trip to France being a final glimpse of happiness for the young psychopath. It is also heavily implied that he talked Jenny’s mother into doing the same. As such he gave in to his evil nature but also (so the novel wants you to feel) done it for good reasons and in the kindest way possible. Setter felt it would have been ‘an error of judgement’ to go to heaven, considering the evil within him and so has committed evil deeds to be sent to hell where he feels he belongs.
It’s a gripping yet distasteful book. The characters are not only unlikeable, they are dislikeable. It’s like the narrator (author?) can only see the bad in people. Pamela Hansford Johnson has a sharp way with words, I particularly liked the following description of conversation at a party; “She was eager to get back to a discussion of her psychological problems and mine, preferably hers.” So much of the block is a little unclear though, I had to re-read parts and the worldview encapsulated by the book so oppressive and unpleasant that although I would say it was a good book, it was not one I much enjoyed.
muggsyspaniel's review
4.0
This was my second book by PHJ, previously I had read Cork Street, Next to the Hatter's. That was a comic novel and I didn't enjoy it at all but I remember enjoying the writing in parts and wondering if her serious novels would be better suited to my tastes. I'm please to say that at the very least this one is .uh better suited to my tastes. This is about marriage and morality and culpability.
Our narrator is a married man who during the course of the book reaches a crisis point in his marriage. There is also a senseless and btutal murder, an intelligent Harley Street Doctor with dark thoughts and a splash of cuckolding on the side but it's a sharp concise nov that never gets bogged down in the philosophies the characters espouse.
Good, thoughtful and readable stuff.
Our narrator is a married man who during the course of the book reaches a crisis point in his marriage. There is also a senseless and btutal murder, an intelligent Harley Street Doctor with dark thoughts and a splash of cuckolding on the side but it's a sharp concise nov that never gets bogged down in the philosophies the characters espouse.
Good, thoughtful and readable stuff.
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