Apple of My Eye by
Patrick Redmond
hbk out October 03
Published by Simon Schuster
at £12.99
Size, as we know, can be a problem. Particularly, it seems, in the
publishing business. But does one size fit all? Take Patrick Redmond,
for instance. A few years back he wrote his first novel The Wishing
Game and followed it with The Puppet Show, two 400-page plus
psychological grippers (with a hint of the paranormal) that had me
reaching for the superlatives. Does it follow therefore that the new
book from this writer should also swell to such a length?
On the face of it, it does. Redmond's new novel is an ambitious
one,
embracing two damaged lives and the calamitous consequences that result
when those two lives collide. Ronnie Sidney is the illegitimate result
of a hasty World War Two romance, his mother orphaned by a Nazi bomb
and taken in by uncaring relatives eager to remind her of the debt she
owes. Ronnie grows up to be the apple of his mother's eye, but with a
fatal flaw at his core. Meanwhile Susan Ramsey, another only child, is
growing up in rather better circumstances. But Susan suffers the
disadvantage of being an unusually beautiful child and, when her mother
suffers a nervous breakdown, she finds herself the subject of malicious
gossip from her schoolmates. Her difficulties are compounded when, at
age seven, her beloved father dies, and a predatory step-father appears
on the scene.
But this time the chemistry of the various interlocking
relationships,
so successful in the previous books, only partly succeeds. Moving
outside the closed societies of a 1950s boarding school (Wishing Game)
and that of a 90s legal practice (Puppet Show) Redmond seems ill at
ease. His broader picture of 50s Britain is seldom more than
stereotypical, all petty jealousies, sexual hypocrisy, film stars and
the rise of rock'n'roll. Unwisely too he spends a lot of time, not
always successfully, to give emotional depth to relationships
peripheral to the plot. Ronnie's dreaded Aunt Vera, for instance, fails
to become much more than a caricature and Ronnie's relationship with
his mother is particularly cloying.
Much better is the development of Ronnie and Susan themselves,
demonstrating the defence mechanisms that both children develop to
enable them to cope with their respective situations, and which
eventually draws them together. When they do meet, sparks fly. But not
for long. Redmond has a few more strands of his plot to bring together,
one rather unsatisfactorily built upon an earlier piece of literary
sleight-of-hand. He does however engineer a splendid climax, though
again somewhat marred by a feel-good 'Hollywood' coda.
Perhaps it would have been better to recognise the essentially
pre-ordained aspect of the tale, paring away unnecessary scenes – and
delivering a shorter book. Regretfully, a disappointment.
Apple of My Eye by
Patrick Redmond
