Care of Wooden Floors
Will Wiles
Care of Wooden Floors
Oskar is a minimalist composer best known for a piece called Variations on Tram Timetables. He is married to a Californian art dealer named Laura and he lives with two cats, named after Russian composers, in an Eastern European city. But this book isn't really about Oskar. Oskar is in Los Angeles, having his marriage dismantled by lawyers. He has entrusted an old university friend with the task of looking after his cats, and taking care of his perfect, beautiful apartment. Despite the fact that Oskar has left dozens of surreally detailed notes covering every aspect of looking after the flat, things do not go well.
3.5 out of 5 based on 7 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction |
| Format |
Hardcover |
| Pages |
304 |
| RRP |
£12.99 |
| Date of Publication |
February 2012 |
| ISBN |
978-0007424436 |
| Publisher |
Harper |
| |
Oskar is a minimalist composer best known for a piece called Variations on Tram Timetables. He is married to a Californian art dealer named Laura and he lives with two cats, named after Russian composers, in an Eastern European city. But this book isn't really about Oskar. Oskar is in Los Angeles, having his marriage dismantled by lawyers. He has entrusted an old university friend with the task of looking after his cats, and taking care of his perfect, beautiful apartment. Despite the fact that Oskar has left dozens of surreally detailed notes covering every aspect of looking after the flat, things do not go well.
Reviews
The Daily Telegraph
Brian Dillon
“If Wiles’s plot sounds like sitcom stuff – Fawlty Towers as read, perhaps, by the pratfall-loving Freud of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life – be assured that Care of Wooden Floors offers other pleasures. They are not so much in the book’s wry thoughts on interiors (Oskar: “We make our rooms, and then our rooms make us”) as in Wiles’s deft and precise descriptive asides. ”
31/01/2012
Read Full Review
The Times
Kate Saunders
“This is a terrific first novel, written with a very engaging deadpan wit, and an understated sense of the absurd.”
16/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Daily Mail
Stephanie Cross
“Wiles is an architecture journalist, and his narrator’s tendency to parse the furnishings, while initially amusing, threatens to wear thin. But as the domestic disasters mount up, this novel acquires the queasy allure of a cliff edge, the sense of impending catastrophe becoming strangely compelling ... weirdly addictive, and rather clever, too.
”
03/02/2012
Read Full Review
Times Literary Supplement
David Winters
“A shame that Wiles shies away from the formal possibilities of his plot; like many mainstream English writers, he seems afraid to take expressive risks with his own slightly too “perfect” style. For all that, Care of Wooden Floors is funny, beguiling and quietly profound; it’s a wonderfully well-crafted debut.”
02/03/2012
Read Full Review
The Guardian
Alfred Hickling
“It's a novel full of impeccably stylish writing, even if its plot could afford to get out more.”
09/03/2012
Read Full Review
The Spectator
Alex Larman
“Wiles is an architecture and design journalist, and there’s something pleasingly streamlined about his novel’s plotting, although the writing itself I found too detached — even clinical — given the absurdity of the goings-on. This can make for a disconcerting read, but Wiles is nonetheless a talent to watch — if from a safe distance.”
24/03/2012
Read Full Review
The Sunday Times
Francesca Angelini
“While the plot is at times repetitive, the novel’s strength lies in Wiles’s wry depiction of the battle between chaos and order.”
26/02/2012
Read Full Review