As for the precious, porous floor: "It didn't have nails, it had a manicure." The narrator, meanwhile, is a council copywriter who hopes that a free holiday in his friend's unoccupied flat may inspire something more substantial than a series of pamphlets about rubbish collection.Īs an architecture and design journalist by trade, Wiles has little difficulty evoking the rarefied austerity of an apartment in which the air "seemed to have been delivered in the bubbles of a thousand crates of San Pellegrino", and the open-plan spaces so precisely laid out that even the dust motes appear organised. All you need to know about Oskar is that he is an internationally renowned composer whose most celebrated work is entitled Variations on Tram Timetables. ![]() Wiles's unnamed protagonist arrives in an unspecified East European capital armed with the keys to the apartment belonging to Oskar, an old university colleague who is away in America and requires someone to undertake the care and feeding of his neurotic, needy cats and exotic hardwood floors. Anyone resistant to the charms of either cats or blond wood interiors may want to steer clear of Will Wiles's debut novel, which prominently features both but it's a nicely turned satire on the notion that the path to spiritual contentment lies in a pristine set of polished wooden floorboards. The implication seemed to be that nothing soothes the feline soul so much as the chance to rub up against Tofteryd TV benches and Poang footstools. A certain Swedish furniture giant recently ran a TV ad in which dozens of cats went walkabout in a Wembley superstore.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |