FICTION: CATHERINE HEANEYreviews The Girl on the LandingBy Paul Torday Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 298pp. £12.99
HOW MUCH can you ever really know someone? This question lies at the heart of ‘The Girl on the Landing’, the third novel from Paul Torday, author of the hugely popular ‘Salmon Fishing in the Yemen’. That title, his debut, won him a loyal following and considerable acclaim, including the 2007 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Writing. His latest offering is an altogether darker affair. Part ghost story, part psychological thriller, it is nevertheless punctuated by flashes of Torday’s trademark black humour.
Michael Gascoigne is the epitome of the gentleman landowner – a deer-stalking, whiskey-drinking, decent, dull chap who divides his time between Beinn Caorrun, his family estate in Perthshire, and Grouchers, his Mayfair club. He is married to Elizabeth, a no-nonsense property journalist, who chose her husband for his stolid dependability rather than any grand passion: theirs is a marriage, if not quite of convenience, then at least of mutual modest expectation.
On a weekend golfing trip to Ireland, Michael notices a painting in the house where they are staying that has a profound effect on him – it is of a girl in a green dress on a landing, but when he goes back to take a second look at it, the figure has vanished. From that moment on, Michael’s life starts to undergo a series of changes – small at first, but increasingly bizarre. Back in London, Grouchers, which up to now has been the mainstay of his daily life, appeals to him less and less, while an unsettling episode at his austere family home hints at dark stirrings from his past. There is also the appearance of a young woman in a green dress, to whom Michael feels some deep, long-forgotten connection – one that grows more sinister over the course of their repeated encounters.
Elizabeth, too, is aware of the change in her husband: his out-of-character behaviour alarms her at first, but also reveals an unexpectedly tender side of his personality. She discovers that, after 10 years of passionless marriage, she is falling in love with this new Michael. She also discovers that he has been taking anti-psychotic drugs for most of his adult life, and so begins a dramatic sequence of events that will simultaneously bring them together, while threatening to drive them apart.
It’s questionable as to how successful Torday is in weaving together the various strands of his story – the narrative jumps from droll accounts of gentlemen’s lunches in Grouchers to quasi-supernatural interludes, to the unfolding (and at times ghoulish) story of Michael’s past. He insightfully tackles the torment of mental illness and debates the rightness – or wrongness – of treating it with drugs but splices these examinations with forays into archaeological theory, which relate to a slightly extraneous plotline about racial prejudice at the club.
This constantly shifting focus, along with a two-person narration (the chapters alternate between Michael’s and Elizabeth’s voice), mean that Torday doesn’t get to fully develop the many themes he touches on. Some two-dimensional characters (Michael’s best friend, Peter, for example), and the not entirely convincing portrait of a marriage, add to the sense of a novel that is not as substantial as it could be.
On the upside, the sheer number of plotlines means ‘The Girl on the Landing’ moves at quite a clip, particularly towards the end, and fans of Torday’s dry wit will enjoy the brilliant caricatures of a certain class of English gentleman. It’s also good to see such a highly successful writer resist the urge to repeat the surefire winning formula in each successive novel. Torday will no doubt keep gaining readers and respect – experiments, even when they don’t entirely work, ultimately lead to better things.
Catherine Heaney is features editor of the Glossmagazine