Following on from her debut How to Be Human, in which a woman became obsessed with a fox, Guardian journalist Paula Cocozza returns with another story about an unlikely relationship. This time, however, it’s one that’s more familiar: a man who is in love with his mobile.
The narrator is Susan, a woman with a delicious sense of humour and a grudge against her husband’s telephone, which she names after Peter Pan’s Wendy. Wendy is adored by Susan’s husband, Kurt. Wendy never leaves his side. He strokes, cajoles and fondles Wendy, often at the most unwelcome moments, and as much as Susan attempts to get between them, she is never successful. Kurt is either cradling Wendy in his arms as he drifts off to sleep, or she lies triumphantly on his chest each evening, as though he were nursing a small child.
At the beginning of the novel, Susan, Kurt and their twin boys (plus Wendy, naturally) are in the process of moving from a Victorian house in a quiet London suburb to a new build on an unfinished commuter estate. The story is divided into phases, representing both the construction of the housing development and the deconstruction of the marriage. As soon as they arrive, Susan is hit with the uneasy feeling that something is missing – that something turns out to be a battered briefcase from her student days which contains a large collection of letters written by her first love, Antony.
After a progressively more unhinged and unsuccessful battle to locate the briefcase, Susan suspects foul play on the part of her husband and decides to take Wendy prisoner, hoping for an exchange of hostages. Susan’s attempts to capture Wendy lead to many comedic moments involving a sledgehammer, a washing machine and a charge of breaking and entering, but she soon comes to realise that Wendy is a symptom rather than a cause of her marital breakdown. She must also decide whether trying to locate Antony himself, rather than merely his letters, is a wise idea or whether the past is always better viewed from a distance.
Cocozza’s writing is addictive – I didn’t reach for my Wendy once while reading this book – and she weaves an unexpectedly moving story, but it’s her sharp observations that really steal the show. From Susan’s scarily modern house (“there are buttons in this room I don’t know the consequences of pressing”) to its deeply symbolic geographical location in a cul-de-sac (“that sad circle where all the lost souls come to perform their U-turns”), our heroine wouldn’t look out of place in an Alan Bennett monologue. “We have a modern version of a long distance relationship. We share a house, but live in different historical eras.”
Speak to Me is a confessional story of our time, a painfully accurate portrayal of a relationship in crisis. Beneath the humour, though, there is a powerful message and a surprising poignancy. In an age when we are able to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world, on multiple platforms and devices, it’s the failure to say what’s on our minds that really matters, because it’s the things we leave unsaid – those unspoken words which remain in our heart – that can change the course of our lives for ever.
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