In ‘Come Rain or Come Shine’, a middle-aged man named Ray visits Charlie and Emily, old university friends who are now married. Ray has never moved on from post-graduate TEFL jobs; Charlie has invited him simply to provide an unfavourable comparison that will make Charlie look good and rescue his ailing relationship with Emily. The story unfolds like a prime-time sitcom, with motivations ignored and authenticity of dialogue and of action abandoned in favour of a series of self- consciously ‘wacky’ set-pieces which are not sufficiently funny to justify the reader’s suspension of disbelief. When Ray accidentally damages Emily’s diary and tries to cover this up by pretending that a dog has ransacked the house — a process which involves cooking a malodorous concoction on the hob to make the place smell dog-like — it is hard either to believe in or care about what is happening.
The two other stories are better but not gripping. In ‘Cellists’ the narrator tells us about Tibor, a promising musician who, as a young man, was taught for several weeks by Eloise, a woman who pretended to be a famous virtuoso but who could not, in fact, play a note. There are some interesting passages, but one wonders how Eloise’s lack of practical knowledge remained unexposed for so long: she apparently gave abstract instructions, but it is implausible that Tibor would not have asked something technical that would have left Eloise floundering. In the almost-title-story, ‘Nocturne’, Lindy Gardner reappears, this time after surgery, but a decent start gives way to an over-long tale which again shifts into capers that seem too staged. That story is perhaps the most reflective of a disappointing volume in which the comedy feels forced and the prose is too rarely a pleasure to read. Nocturnes is not a dreadful collection, but it is far off the pace of the author’s earlier work.
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.