OK, Mr Field, by Katharine Kilalea (Faber, 2018)

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Neil

This is a very odd, quite unsettling novel. Mr Field, the narrator, is a concert pianist whose career has been ended by an accident, and on a whim he spends his compensation money on a reproduction of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, in Cape Town. He moves there with his wife, who soon leaves, and he becomes lethargic and disoriented, and as the house decays around him, he becomes obsessed with its former occupants. He is an elusive character, as he descends into madness, but the reader is drawn along with him, all the time with increasing anxiety. A beautifully written, very short novel, OK Mr Field will surprise and haunt you with its claustrophobic atmosphere.