Glover's Mistake Makes Some Good Choices
Nick Laird's Novel of Contemporary London Is a Welcome Sight
Northern Irishman Nick Laird’s second novel, Glover’s Mistake, has a lot going for it. Unlike the recent trend of novels with omniscient narrators (which, as Henry James said of certain 19th century novels, often leads to sprawling works that are “loose, baggy monsters”), Laird’s book is tight and well crafted, and employs a third-person “free indirect style.”
James Wood’s recent book How Fiction Works does wonders to bring this style back into the literary consciousness. Here’s how Wood describes its effect: “The narrative seems to float away from the novelist and take on the properties of the character, who now seems to ‘own’ the words.”
From Gustave Flaubert, who did much to innovate it, to James, who perfected and championed it, and onwards into great modernist writers like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, free indirect style is a superb way to delve deeper into human character and the workings of the mind, and to do much more than tell surface tales. It’s a wonder, then, that it’s so rarely seen in the novels offered up by publishers these days.
A Triangle Becomes a Square
Glover’s Mistake, set in contemporary London, is the story of a love triangle involving David Pinner, a college teacher in his ‘30s, Ruth Marks, an artist in her late 40s, and a former teacher of David’s, and James Glover, Pinner’s young roommate, who works in a Soho bar. The novel’s copious details of contemporary life (e-mailing, etc.) not only alert us to the kind of world we’re living in, but also serve as a vehicle for Laird to paint a portrait of how we view “timeless” feelings of love against a kind of technological background.
It’s essentially not a pretty portrait, but it’s certainly stimulating and thought-provoking. Thanks to the free indirect style, we don’t just look at the love triangle from the outside, but get caught up in it, almost as if the reader functions as a fourth person in the situation.
Not Without Its Problems
A few problems arise along the way. Free indirect style is notoriously difficult, and Laird at times seems to fall into the trap of falling into other styles and compromising consistency. The novel is made up of relatively short scenes that don’t always gather sufficient energy and depth. The chapter titles, such as “All about frustration” and “Collective nouns” are more clever than truly helpful. And many readers have grown weary of intelligent characters who can’t seem to truly navigate through their lives or make sense of them. Such readers wonder if heavy or light tragedy should no longer be the traditional way to inform us what’s wrong with the world we live in.
Despite all this, Glover’s Mistake is a welcome sight on the contemporary fiction scene.
Title: Glover’s Mistake
Author: Nick Laird
Publisher: Viking, July 2009, 247 pages, $25.95
ISBN: 978-0-670-02097-3
Nick Laird's New Novel Glover's Mistake
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