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Care of Wooden Floors [Hardcover]

Will Wiles (Author)
3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
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Book Description

Publication Date: 2 Feb 2012

A bold and brilliant debut from a darkly funny new voice.

Oskar is a minimalist composer best known for a piece called Variations on Tram Timetables. He is married to a Californian art dealer named Laura and he lives with two cats, named after Russian composers, in an Eastern European city. But this book isn't really about Oskar. Oskar is in Los Angeles, having his marriage dismantled by lawyers. He has entrusted an old university friend with the task of looking after his cats, and taking care of his perfect, beautiful apartment.

Despite the fact that Oskar has left dozens of surreally detailed notes covering every aspect of looking after the flat, things do not go well.

Care of Wooden Floors is about how a tiny oversight can trip off a disastrous and farcical (fatal, even) chain of consequences. It's about a friendship between two men who don't know each other very well. It's about alienation and being alone in a foreign city. It's about the quest for perfection and the struggle against entropy. And it is, a little, about how to take care of wooden floors.

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 304 pages
  • Publisher: HarperPress (2 Feb 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0007424434
  • ISBN-13: 978-0007424436
  • Product Dimensions: 14.4 x 22.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (64 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 44,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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› Visit Amazon's Will Wiles Page
Will Wiles
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Product Description

Review

Radio 4 Book at Bedtime

‘Funny and richly poetic…a surreal, farcical, original first novel’ The Times Books of the Year

‘A very funny novel combining schadenfreude and belly laughs. Just don’t let Wiles flat-sit for you.’ Independent

‘This is a terrific first novel, written with a very engaging deadpan wit, and an understated sense of the absurd.’ Kate Saunders, The Times

‘ingenious…his story has something in common, in terms of manic sensitivity, with Edgar Allan Poes’ The Tell-Tale Heart…[with] deft and precise descriptive asides. This is a smart and polished debut.’ Daily Telegraph

‘This novel acquires the queasy allure of a cliff edge, the sense of impending catastrophe becoming strangely compelling…addictive and rather clever, too.’ Daily Mail

‘Funny, beguiling and quietly profound; a wonderfully well-crafted debut.’ TLS

“A nicely turned satire on the notion that the path to spiritual contentment lies in a pristine set of polished wooden floorboards …Wiles has an eye for beauty, but an even more impressive eye for ugliness… a novel full of impeccably stylish writing…” Guardian

‘A novel about minimalism and chaos, which reveals more about the interaction of architecture and life than many an earnest treatise. If you want above all a good read, get this one.’ Guardian Best Architecture Books of the Year

‘Highly idiosyncratic, well-written, with a vivid sense of place – compelling.’ Michael Frayn

‘Care of Wooden Floors is a wonderful work. Precisely constructed, with an eye that sees in between the everyday spaces of our lives, it sheds new light, not only on ourselves, but on the contemporary novel itself.’ Lee Rourke, author of The Canal

‘The novel’s strength lies in Wiles’s wry depiction of the battle between chaos and order.’ Sunday Times

‘entertainingly conjure[s] up a life lived through aesthetics’ Art Review

‘Wiles is a talent to watch’ The Spectator

‘Compelling’ Independent on Sunday

About the Author

Will Wiles is an architecture and design journalist. He lives in London.

Website: www.willwiles.blogspot.com

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
29 of 33 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Utter genius 1 Nov 2011
By J. Morris TOP 500 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
Care of Wooden Floors is Will Wiles' first novel but it is a masterpiece. Our narrator is charged with looking after the extremely high-end, eastern-European flat of his dear university friend Oskar - a Philharmonic pianist - whilst Oskar is in L.A. getting divorced from his high-end, western-American wife. The job seems simple enough initially, feed the cats, take the rubbish out, oh, and mind the floors, they're brand new & French oak. As our narrator explores the soviet-bloc city and drinks bottle after bottle of Oskar's collection, small mishaps lead to bigger problems and the narrator realises he may have irreparably damaged Oskar's flat & in turn, their friendship - what will he say upon his return?

COWF is very clever; it's initial set-up maybe very simple and you might feel that there is not an awful lot of material to work with, but it's the gradual unpeeling of Oskar via his neurotic hidden notes throughout the flat that brings a fantastic level of character development. The flat becomes a metaphor for perfection; an ideal life that the narrator envies and fantasises about. As the continual stream of destruction and wine-rings the narrator brings flows freely, he learns that some things aren't alive without a few scars as proof of living.

Well written; based in a nameless ex-soviet city and more about a man that is absent for the entirety of the book than it is the narrator, but highly enjoyable, written in vivacious and lucid prose and made me laugh out loud on several occasions. Literature of this calibre from a new author is rare, highly recommended!!
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Writing that is neither "wooden" nor "flawed" 13 Nov 2011
By Ripple TOP 50 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)
In an unnamed Eastern European city, our equally unnamed narrator is flat-sitting for his university friend, Oskar, a classical music composer with an unhealthy obsession for order and detail, while the latter is away in California in the depths of getting a divorce from his art dealer wife. Oskar's flat is a minimalist paradise, full of artistic cool (the author is a deputy editor of an architecture and design magazine after all) while our narrator is a scruffy freelance writer whose best work has been in writing recycling leaflets for his local council. All he has to do is to look after the two cats (somewhat inevitably named after Russian composers) and above all to make sure that nothing happens to Oskar's newly laid and very expensive wooden floor. Oskar has, perhaps helpfully perhaps annoyingly, left extensive instructive notes around the flat. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, just about everything is the answer. Over the space of eight days, disaster leads to catastrophe as things spiral deeper and deeper out of control while our narrator tries to put things right while at the same time tries to justify, at least to himself, how none of this is in any way his fault. The problems come thick and fast and reach almost farcical proportions. One slight word of warning to the more feline-sensitive reader, I use the term CATastrophe advisedly and I can imagine that some might find some of these aspects a little upsetting.

"Care of Wooden Floors" is often very funny and beautifully written throughout. It's full of clever and funny similes and metaphors and the style is neither "wooden" nor "flawed". As the disasters mount up, it can feel quite oppressing but that is probably a sign that the reader is involved in the story.... Read more ›
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars The dangers of red wine 24 Nov 2012
By Marie
Format:Paperback
In Care Of Wooden Floors we follow an unnamed protagonist as he leaves his home in London to be a flat-sitter for an old university friend somewhere in Eastern Europe. His friend, the fastidious Oskar, has had to go to the USA to sort out his divorce, so he has asked our narrator to keep an eye on his beautiful home and look after his two cats. Initially it seems like it's going to be a breeze - with no work obligations to distract him, he can spend lazy days doing a bit of sightseeing before coming home to relax with a bottle of red wine and working on his novel. However soon he begins to realise it's going to be a more stressful job than he first thought. I had so much fun reading this book and it made me laugh out loud on a couple of occasions. It's a sort of comedy of errors, a succession of increasingly ridiculous accidents and mishaps that have you groaning along with the protagonist every step of the way.

I loved the way this book made me think about how we choose our friends, and how people with fundamentally clashing personalities can be very close. It is one thing to see a person socially on a regular basis but another thing entirely to be let into their home and take responsibility for their sanctuary. Oskar is a constant presence in the book despite the fact that he is halfway across the world and there is something overbearing and irritatingly smug about his personality. Nevertheless, at times I found myself relating to him more than the protagonist.

It also made me think a lot about how the simplest scenario can take a disastrous turn when red wine is involved. Ohhh, red wine...... Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant!
I brought this book on a complete whim and it was one of the best decisions - it's funny, well written, insightful and interesting. Read more
Published 25 days ago by Katherine Brennan
4.0 out of 5 stars Bizarre but fun.
The plot line of this book is very bizarre. It's one of those books set over a short period of time where very little that actually seems important enough to write about takes... Read more
Published 2 months ago by F. Smith
4.0 out of 5 stars Dark humour, slow but worth it
Really enjoyed the slow-burn of this, the ridiculous escalation and climax. Not for all, but good payoff if you are patient. Very blackly funny.
Published 2 months ago by K. J. Noyes
5.0 out of 5 stars my son could have written it!
Really interesting development of form and recognisable characterisation for anyone who has been through the grown-up but not quite adult stage. Is it a rite of passage novel?
Published 2 months ago by crazysalad
4.0 out of 5 stars cringeworthy
Anyone who has sat cringeing through the TV series 'The worst week of my life' will understand what this book is about. Read more
Published 3 months ago by P. Cranfield
4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful use of language
I can't decide what this was, was it dark comedy - yes, was it farce, well certainly there were farcical events. It was more though than that. Read more
Published 3 months ago by D. M. Dickson
5.0 out of 5 stars Darkly Amusing
This is the story of a man who goes to a foreign city to look after a friend's flat - rent free! Anyone who has ever been in this situation will appreciated the potential perils. Read more
Published 4 months ago by A1 Reader
1.0 out of 5 stars Does one really care though?
Very self-indulgent writing but an interesting experiment in the human experience. Best read at speed! Read more
Published 4 months ago by Helen Penry
4.0 out of 5 stars why aren't the floor boards tongue and groove
This book starts off as a gentle send up of the pretensions of hipsterdom, such as the composer of 'Variations of Tram Timetables'. Read more
Published 5 months ago by tallmanbaby
5.0 out of 5 stars 'Care of Wooden Floors'ding rounsur
Un-putdownable!! Fascinating novel. Very much on a par with 'Salmon Fishing in the Yemin'. Will Wiles descriptions of the main protagonist, his surroundings, locations and fine... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Mrs. Jill Richardson-jones
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