Mr. Wakefield's Crusade

Mr Wakefield's Crusade was a very odd kind of fish. This is to be expected I suppose, as everything I've read by Rubens so far has been quirky in the extreme, which is a quality that sets her writing apart. I particularly enjoyed her brand of dark humour in The Waiting Game, The Elected Member and Nine Lives, but for some reason this book made me feel uncomfortable. In retrospect, I see Rubens very intentionally manipulated the reader so he or she would share in the protagonist's sense of disconnect.

Mr Wakefield lives in great luxury in a penthouse apartment in London, having benefited from a huge inheritance from his estranged mother. A self-professed utter failure, he is lonely in the extreme, having no hobbies or interests other show more than keeping alive the flame of anger and resentment for his ex-wife Connie, who left him to live with a woman in Australia. He's made a habit of going to the post office once a week, just on the off chance of starting a conversation with a strangers waiting in line, and on one such day the man just in front of him falls dead before he's had a chance to post his letter. Mr Wakefield grabs this letter and later upon reading it, discovers to his horror that the man has written to his murdered wife to ask for her pardon. He immediately decides he must find out all about the crime and the murdered wife, his 'crusade' which will help him forget about his lesbian ex-wife, whom he blames for having emasculated him. He drinks heavily and falls into deep paranoia, convinced he is a prime suspect in the murder and that his doorman and the police are watching his every movement. As I write this summary, I wonder why I didn't enjoy the book more than I did, because the premise is rather amusing. Perhaps it's the fact that Mr Wakefield is the storyteller: an unreliable narrator at best and evidently a deeply disturbed individual. As the story unfolded and came to a very kooky ending, I found I'd gained much sympathy for our odd would-be hero, so perhaps an eventual reread won't be out of the question. show less