FictionIt is all too easy to make mistakes, and all too difficult to correct them. The sheer weight of one wrong committed in anger by a young girl takes over her life.
The more she tries to escape her past, the more doggedly it pursues her in the form of her victim's troubled brother.
Lesley Glaister's 11th novel amounts to a masterclass in psychological thriller writing. It also looks back to her outstanding second novel, Trick or Treat(1991), in which she also explored obsession. Both novels are very good, they also illustrate how a novelist will plot as carefully as a police thriller writer, while also looking as deliberately to literary devices.
The difference lies in the emphasis - the thriller writer is looking to plot and the presentation of the clues, the literary writer relies more on character development. It is not so much what happens as how it happens.
This is where Glaister, one of the most under-rated of contemporary British writers, does so well. Her grasp of the horrible and the ordinary and the point at which both meet defines her offbeat flair and black humour, suggesting that she is more than the match of Ruth Rendell, and is certainly the equal of Hilary Mantel. Stroppy and often extraordinarily perceptive, Glaister is earthy with a flair for observations of surreal lyricism, and inhabits a country akin to that of the Coen brothers, albeit one transplanted to modern Britain.
"Someone is watching me," announces the present-day narrator of her fifth novel, Partial Eclipse(1994), a story spanning two worlds, two distinct historical periods. "Eyes seen through a slit are never kind eyes. What I would see if I could be bothered to look up would be like a rectangle snipped from a face . . . Take the roundest, bluest, kindest eyes and view them through a slot from inside a cell and they will seem cruel. Be cruel." And then a classic Glaister punch is despatched: "God, I could do with a smoke."
Nina Todd Has Gonemoves along at an incredible pace. Things just keep happening, yet somehow Glaister not only allows the reader at least one saving pause for breath, Nina often has one as well. But only long enough to allow the next shock take full impact. "Listen. You should always trust your gut feelings. They are a gift from your subconscious to your conscious mind. If only I had trusted mine." It is obvious something appalling is going to unfold, yet equally there is the suspicion that dreadful deeds have already occurred. Glaister's characters tend to live in the shadow of their respective histories. And Nina has a past; she just chooses to ignore it.
She also, very early in the narrative, has acquired a stalker. He is no ordinary pest. Instead of obvious menace, Rupert is threatening her with his good looks, charm and solicitude. Glaister has no difficulty about releasing information. Her main concern is the execution of the game of chess that is this narrative. The story is good, but the characterisation is better. Nina and her beleaguered bird-watcher boyfriend, Charlie, are brilliantly outplayed by Charlie's widowed mother, Fay, a skeletal painted doll possessed of a sharp mind and a sharper turn of phrase. It is she who detects the desperation barely concealed behind Nina's hurry to belong.
Fatalistic if hopeful Nina is more than a mystery - she is a minefield. At times, she is simply too intelligent, yet her perceptions never lose an instinctive response to smells, sounds, a gesture. As the accident-prone Nina lies in a hospital bed - few characters in any novel suffer the amount of accidents that befall her and remain alive - having rejected flowers she mistakenly believes to have been sent by her stalker, she listens to the nurse as she walks away. "I could hear the soles of her shoes unpeeling right down the corridor and the sound of double doors swinging open and shut." Her situation goes from bad to deplorable and she finds herself haunted by the ghost of Fay, whose ashes she sprinkled on her food in an attempt to become closer.
Nina is not the only narrator; Rupert, alias Mark, also gives his side of the story. His history indicates that he may not be all that reliable - and that he may also be dangerous. He has watched his defeated parents retreating from life. His mother, once a homemaker of flair, has taken to the sofa and comfort-eating. His father's despairing last grab at existence is eloquently conveyed in the saggy new jeans he suddenly favours and his hair, which he may have decided to dye. The son comes home and finds his parents seated before the television. He watches his father: "Dad waited till his horse had lost." At times both Nina and Rupert express themselves with an intellectual flourish that jars with their characterisation. When Rupert says to Nina, "What a reductive view of life you have", it rings hollow. But it is one of the few false notes. Nina seems to be speaking for everyone when she reckons that "No one is beautiful inside, just as no one is purely good", although, as the story unfolds, it appears that in her own damaged way she is aiming to be better.
In the context of Glaister's fiction, it is a terrific performance. As a writer she has become increasingly interested in our messed-up minds as well as our messed-up lives. Now You See Me(2001) and As Far As You Can Go(2004) both explored the psychological thriller with dauntingly inventive intensity, and she has far greater range than Julie Myerson. In common with Tim Parks, who has lived in Italy since the early 1980s, Glaister appears to live beyond the London literary pale. This new book shares something of Parks's macabre second novel, Loving Roger(1986), in which obsession is the theme. Obsession has long dominated the fictions of Glaister - consider Digging To Australia(1992). Daring as well as solid and adept, she is working in an area best described as astute, modern psycho-gothic. Read her and begin to watch everyone near you that bit more closely.
• Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
• Nina Todd Has Gone By Lesley Glaister Bloomsbury, 277pp. £12.99
