Phoenix Book Reviews would like to thank John for his review
John Van der Kiste lives in Devon. A library assistant, former DJ and musician, he has written over twenty books, mostly historical or musical biographies, and reviewed records and books for national and local journals and fanzines.
Matt Webster, a 31-year-old theatre critic in East London, returns home from work one dismal January evening to find his wife Kath has disappeared. Only after anxiously phoning friends and acquaintances does he find an envelope on the mantelpiece, containing a blunt note saying she is leaving him, as she has 'been living a death'. How could she, particularly as they have a four-year-old son, Josh? Surely she'll come back, if only for the boy's sake, no matter what she might feel about Matt or the state of their marriage?
His bosses are full of understanding, he manages to find a helpful babysitter while he goes back to work after leave of absence and a chance to get over the shock, and his widowed father from Yorkshire steps into the breach the best he can. Most of the family and friends around him could hardly be nicer, apart from his stuck-up mother-in-law, who tells him tactlessly that he is not coping and she has a God-given right to take Josh to live with her and his grandfather.
And certainly nobody could be nicer than the ever-solicitous Louise, Kath's best friend, who is equally thunderstruck at what has happened and whose own marriage seems to have hit a difficult patch. Nobody, perhaps, than Beth, a potentially man-eating theatrical agent from Washington DC who left the US for London in order to get away from her ex, and with no children or other ties to hold her back. Both women make it subtly clear that they'd be more than a little keen to get closer to him, and are irritated that he seems unable to move on. In due course he spends a weekend in Italy with Beth, some of it between the sheets. But their guilty pleasures are shattered by a long-distance call from Louise to say that Matt's father-in-law has just died, and he needs to return home for what promises to be a rather fraught gathering of family and friends at the funeral.
This is a sympathetic, often moving novel. It's hard not to feel for Matt when things keep going wrong - when he finds that his friend Graham has been cheating on him (some friend), or when the women he trusts stick the knife in. On the lighter side, it's just as hard to suppress a wry smile at some of the black humour, like when he dashes out to buy Joshua a new hamster to replace the one he believes he has accidentally killed, only to find out it was suffering from momentary concussion; or when he invites a prospective babysitter for interview, only to find out it was the girl he told off for fooling around in the park only a few days earlier.
Much as I enjoyed the characterisation and the narrative, taken as a whole I found this a little unfulfilling. Apart from establishing that the bond he has with Josh is the most important thing in Matt's life, the novel doesn't really seem to reach an end. In a sense, I was wanting more by the time I reached the last page, as if there was a final chapter to bring everything to a proper conclusion. I feel it didn't. Life goes on, but I for one would have liked to know how.
Publisher: Flame
ISBN: 0 340 77010 4
Price: £6.99 p/b
Date Reviewed: August 2002
John's Rating: 3/5
