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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
He knows everything about her before they meet; more about her nine novels than she does herself. He has devoted his life to studying and teaching them and yet he is four times as clever as she is. Now, as she steps off the train in London, something about her in the flesh sets him thinking. Maybe he has a chance to resolve the one remaining mystery at the heart of things . . .
About the Author
Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. His novels include Towards the End of the Morning, The Trick of It and A Landing on the Sun. Headlong (1999) was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, while his most recent novel, Spies (2002), won the Whitbread Novel Award. His fifteen plays range from Noises Off to Copenhagen and most recently Afterlife. He is married to the writer Claire Tomalin.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A novel about those who write novels is far from novel. We are familiar with authors struggling to become published or famous, we are aware that their fate lies in the hands or minds of their readers. But a literature don who marries his special subject? While providing smiles and even outright chuckles as the narrator outlines encounter and marriage with his curriculum, this is a poignant novel of obsessed possession and an inability to allow the beloved space to breathe. She has faults (she wears unmatched underwear!) but the unforgiveable sin is that she can write effortlessly and without the need to theorise. For this, ultimately, she must be destroyed. An awful warning against teaching contemporary literature.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The premise of this novella (130 pages) is that a teacher of English literature, "Richard", meets and marries the famous novelist, "JL", on whom he is the leading authority. The book takes the form of a series of letters Richard writes to a former colleague who is now forging a new life in Australia. Frayn has tackled journalists, civil servants and art dealers in his novels, and in this work he deftly deconstructs the nature of literary criticism as Richard tries to establish "the trick" of how someone so totally ordinary can write best-selling and critically-acclaimed novels. The poignant humour is well up to Frayn's usual standards, and the characterisation is spot on. Inevitably, the marriage of teacher and subject ends in disaster as Richard fails to treat his wife as a wife as opposed to "JL", and realises that his own collapse is reflected against his correspondent's flourishing marriage in the New World. This is a bitter-sweet and beautiful work.
"If we'd known you were coming we'd have baked a complete social and intellectual context for you."
23 Jan 2012
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I so enjoyed this book, it had me laughing several times - Frayn's wit is scintillating. This is a story about writing, how it's done (the `trick' of the title) except it isn't a trick, not really, you either can do it or you can't, as the narrator of this tale finds out to his cost. Richard Dunnett has made a comfortable academic career as the specialist on the (female) writer JL, whose books are highly regarded - and then she agrees to come and talk to his literature students. He is amused to find that she is utterly ordinary, but later as he pursues her to the room she's been given for her stay overnight, he finds himself enraptured. The older woman (Richard is 32, JL is 43) departs and he sends an excess of flowers after her and then turns up on her London doorstep.
The whole of the narrative consists of letters in which Richard tells his Australian friend what is happening. Or rather, a version of what is happening. One learns very quickly to read between the lines, especially as Richard's attempts to advise her on her work, namely, to introduce an ironic framework into her latest novel, fails to bring them closer. Finally, Richard has to admit defeat:
"I've been watching her for more than four years, and I've seen everything. But the essential bit - the gadget that makes it all work, the crystal, the chip, the formula, the dodge, the wheeze, the scam, the flick of the wrist, the twist of the fingers, the whatever it is - *that* remains as invisible as the peacocks' tongues at her banquet."
His own ironic framework securely in place, Frayn has, with this 130pp novella exceeded all expectations. It is a small but beautiful masterpiece.
The whole of the narrative consists of letters in which Richard tells his Australian friend what is happening. Or rather, a version of what is happening. One learns very quickly to read between the lines, especially as Richard's attempts to advise her on her work, namely, to introduce an ironic framework into her latest novel, fails to bring them closer. Finally, Richard has to admit defeat:
"I've been watching her for more than four years, and I've seen everything. But the essential bit - the gadget that makes it all work, the crystal, the chip, the formula, the dodge, the wheeze, the scam, the flick of the wrist, the twist of the fingers, the whatever it is - *that* remains as invisible as the peacocks' tongues at her banquet."
His own ironic framework securely in place, Frayn has, with this 130pp novella exceeded all expectations. It is a small but beautiful masterpiece.
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