I've had a slightly strange relationship so far with the novels of Maggie O'Farrell. I tried her much admired first novel, After You'd Gone, and just didn't get on at all with it -- in fact I abandoned it rather quickly. I now think that must have been a mistake, and I will try again. Then I got hold of The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, and enjoyed it enormously. So when I was in the wonderful £2 Bookshop in Oxford (cheaper, nowadays, than most charity shops, around here anyway) and spotted this, I snapped it up. I've just emerged, having found it pretty un-put-downable.
"To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom" (Evelyn Waugh) is the epigraph to the fourth and final section of this novel. To be honest, I'm not sure how applicable this is to the plot. Love, or what people take to be love, is certainly the theme of the book. It starts with Lily, who meets the gorgeous Marcus at a party and has moved in with him within days. But his flat is haunted by the spectre of his last girlfriend, beautiful, tragic Sinead, with whom Lily becomes obsessed. However when she finally managed to discover the truth of Sinead's story, everything she has thought and believed is completely turned upside down.
Does this sound like chick-lit? In less capable hands it certainly could be. But it is saved from belonging to that rather depressing-sounding category by two things. One is the quality of the writing, which is really good -- Maggie O'Farrell uses words and images in a way which is constantly surprising and infinitely pleasing. The other is the subtlety and perceptiveness with which this novel explores the variety of emotions elicited in human beings by what is known as "being in love". All four of the main characters -- the fourth is Marcus's friend Aiden -- certainly suffer from this in their different ways throughout the novel. And when I say suffer, that is the operative word -- there's precious little joy here, and a great deal of pain, most of it caused, one way or another, by Marcus. O'Farrell seemed to me to be questioning, or at least causing me to question, whether people really have any idea what love really means -- here it seems to shade too easily into obsession, and trust is not something that figures in any appreciable way. As for wisdom, which E Waugh says is the result of loving another human being, I'm not convinced that anyone here has really gained all that much of it.
Maggie O'Farrell has just published another novel, The Hand That First Held Mine, which I now look forward to very much. Have you read her? I think you should.