George Fletcher is a successful accountant but a victim in his own life. His repressive upbringing led him into, and out the other side of, a brief marriage 15 years ago and he has been unable to form any relationship since. He is ordinary, predictable and sad. Then one day his routine existence is blasted apart when he sees a beautiful young woman and falls deeply and irrevocably in obsession with her. He fantasises about imprisoning her in his attic and he stalks her to her home – just a few doors down from his mother. His new passion fires and inspires and changes him, as it does all those around him.
This novel is about the nature of love and the agony of thwarted desire, the blurring of reality and fantasy and the pitiless destruction of innocence by evil intent. It highlights and walks the thin line between dreams and obsessions as first one character and then another is forced through coincidence and circumstance into connecting with others. A strong theme is the characters’ inability to communicate any of their deep feelings and it is this, as much as anything else, that leads to tragedy.
I am a sucker for a well-turned phrase and this book is full of them: ‘The heavy face trembled into an expression of pain intended to be a smile’. Lovely. Maureen O’Brien writes with a flair and a sureness of touch using language in an elegantly restrained and evocative way that perfectly conveys her sympathy for her characters.
I did wonder for some time whether this was really a novel about crime. There
is a murder but it seems to come more as the inevitable consequence of the characters’
struggle to break out of the confines of their own frustration rather than the
driving force of the plot. I suspect that doesn’t really matter. I would have
enjoyed it just as much with or without a body. One small niggle: too many exclamation
marks. Maureen O’Brien is far too fine a writer to need them!
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Ruth Wade
Maureen O’Brien has written five other novels: Close up on Death, Deadly
Reflection, Mask of Betrayal, Dead Innocent, Revenge, and Unauthorised
Departure.