paperback

I can understand why this book has not been reissued since this 1981 paperback edition. Many of Farrell's stylistic traits are already present - the comic richness of the descriptions, the less than heroic leading characters and the essential futility of their lives and aspirations, but the historical backdrops that breathed such life into the Empire trilogy (Troubles, The Siege of Krishnapur and my personal favourite The Singapore Grip) are largely absent from this surreal but rather humdrum tale of life in a run-down English seaside town, making this a rather curious period piece. An interesting read if only because of what it reveals about Farrell's development as a writer.

The unreliable narrator is Boris, a cynical middle-aged drifter who claims to be a Polish count, who arrives in the seaside town of Maidenhair as a young man having made a sudden decision to get off the train there and is still there years later living off his wife's eccentric family. Much of the plot follows Boris's thoughts, nightmares and memories as he goes through a mid-life crisis, while obsessing over the younger guests of the house. In this sense it resembles Farrell's next book Troubles, but that was a much more fully formed and convincing creation. ( )