The Girl on the Landing

I was really hoping for a slightly more intense experience, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. There were a couple of small annoyances, but on the whole a worthwhile read. ( )

Michael and Elizabeth Gascoigne are the narrators of The Girl on the Landing and the question that puzzled me was, just how reliable are their accounts. It soon becomes obvious that it is Michael who is the problem. It begins when Michael and Elizabeth visit a friend’s country house and he spots a painting of a landing with a woman clad in a green dress in the background – except that there is no woman in the painting. Despite his outward calm and reliability he is mentally ill – hearing voices and seeing people who aren’t there – or are they? I began to wonder if they were real after all. Such was the effect this book had on me. When he stops taking the drug their marriage takes on a new character, taking Elizabeth quite by surprise, initially liking it, but soon scaring her.

The location is split between Michael’s luxury London flat and his large country estate in Scotland. In London he is the part-time membership secretary of Grouchers, an exclusive gentlemen’s club. Here he is faced with a difficult situation when Mr Patel, a Ugandan Asian applies for membership, raising questions about the nature of Britishness and Englishness, identity and personality – all quite disturbing for Michael and the other members.

In contrast to life in London, is the Gascoignes’ life in Scotland, in the dank and gloomy house Michael inherited from his parents – Beinn Caorunn. Elizabeth hates the place and rarely goes there, but Michael loves it; it is the place where he feels “connected to the world again”. But Michael has secrets and as the novel progresses the nature of these secrets are gradually revealed, building a sense of mystery and foreboding. Just who is the woman in the green dress, the Lamia and what did happen to Michael’s parents?

The tension builds and I just had to finish the book, but I thought the ending was an anti-climax as Elizabeth takes over the narrative and we are left dangling. Just what did happen … ? But I couldn’t really imagine how else it could end and it was a very enjoyable book. ( )

Elizabeth and Michael and mental illness ( )

Easily one of the worst books i've read in a long, long time.

The cover proudly proclaims that it's "from the author of 'Salmon fishing in the Yemen'", which is a pretty quirky sounding title, for sure, but i won't be reading that book, just in case it's anything at all like this shocker. It says a lot about the publisher's own regard for this "novel" that they need to mitigate it with such a boldly displayed claim. "Salmon" was, and i quote the blurb, "an immediate bestseller that has been sold in 24 countries." By contrast, his second novel, "The Irresistible inheritance of Wilberforce" - again, quirky - was "published to great critical acclaim" (translation: it didn't sell).

And then there's this misery.

Torday has done a lot of research for this potboiler, and he shares that research with us rather too clunkingly for it to read like fiction and not some sort of lame "educational" blether aimed at highly impressionable adolescents. Why he didn't just save himself time and effort and photostat his notebook straight into the novel is the only real mystery here.

He winds up a psychopath and sets him off on a killing *yawn* spree, inspired by ghostly tree voices and the eponymous muse, a comely lass who keeps popping up to suggest he do bad stuff to folks. The story proceeds to its end with the predictability of a download progress bar, and the device of telling the story from two first person narrators seems like a class activity from a creative writing course.

If you can get over your disappointment at the fact that the ghost story you've signed on for is now something much less substantial, there's some mildly engaging stuff about how being a psychopath was maybe once an evolutionary step in human development (this is one of the many places where the notebook comes in) and that it may be that modern psychopaths are throwbacks to those simpler days.

Interesting idea, and, in the hands of someone who knew how to write, it might have made an interesting read. Needless to say, that's not the case here.

If you feel some morbid desire to read this book (so you can say at dinner parties that you've read every book ever written by Paul Torday, for example), then borrow it from a library; do not pay money for it. ( )

One of those books that creeps up and you and bludgeons you over the head with an ending you'll never see coming... ( )