Care of Wooden Floors [Paperback]

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!!

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. It really is the quality of the writing that make this book stand out though. If the writing style were a character, it would be someone like Stephen Fry - it's clever and witty but somehow it knows it and yet you forgive it this slight smugness because it is so very funny.

Beyond the central story, the book gives a believable portrayal of a man alone in a strange city. His only contact with the "locals" are a night out on the town with one of Oskar's friends and several encounters with the scary, dumpy, brusk and non-English speaking cleaning lady who clearly doesn't like Oskar's houseguest - with good reason it turns out.

The book also ends with a nice plot twist that I didn't see coming. My only advice would be not to read this if you are on holiday and have a friend looking after your house while you are away. You'll end up a nervous wreck!

This book makes a promising start with an intriguing premise but I found myself losing interest as the story progressed. I began to find it more and more unlikely that Oskar would have chosen the narrator to look after his cherished flat though this is explained in part later in the book. In the meantime, I found the action slow, the hero irritating, and the writing a mixture of delightful observations punctuated by overwritten,sometimes silly, similes and metaphors. Perhaps their use was intentional in order to show the character's anxiety resulting from increasing paranoia but I found it at times, self-conscious and overdone. For example, in describing a hangover: "The headache stirred inside me, and the nausea moved like custard under a skin." Or, in finding himself alone, "there was no one in the hall. The silence was patient, understanding." I think the author is a talented writer and I finished the book but would not be drawn to his style in the future.