Synopsis: Set in Britain on the eve of World War II, it involves Edward Haggard, a young doctor in a London hospital, who falls for Fanny Vaughan, the wife of an older physician. The attraction is mutual, and they begin a brief, passionate affair. After a calamitous run-in with the husband, Haggard leaves London, buying a crumbling seaside mansion and the practice of a retiring doctor. His feelings for the now-deceased Fanny grow to unbearable intensity several years later after a visit by her son, a young fighter pilot, and his obsession takes a bizarre erotic twist. An example of the psychological side of the gothic, this is a haunting portrayal of a man broken by passion.
It is said that when a person dies, his life flashes before his eyes. At the end of this brilliant novel, that’s the realization that flowered inside my head; this was that flash.
Through ominous hints dropped at the ends of paragraphs, I thought I had a sense of where this was going. Dr. Haggard’s psychological unraveling came on steadily and although you know he’s an unreliable narrator, you are still surprised by how fast he came unwoven at the end.
I’m stymied in my attempt to review this book because it’s so subtle in its power. The way McGrath chooses words is masterful. To wit this description of the boarding house where Dr. Haggard lives when he first meets Fanny – “The front door, four or five steps up from the pavement, behind high spiked iron railings, was inset with a panel of stained glass and opened into a dark hallway dominated by a sideboard like a catafalque.” Now that’s setting the stage. Not only does he convey what the structure looks like, but the feel as well. Catafalque. That’s what does it.
Not only is it McGrath’s choice of vocabulary to establish mood and setting, but it’s his foreshadowing technique. Spike is referred to often as something that has to be appeased, quieted and dealt with. We know Dr. H now has to walk with a cane. We know Fanny is dead and the affair ended. We suspect her husband, but all this is allowed to swirl in our minds; incorporeal. It’s just one of the unknowns that so keenly provide tension and suspense. McGrath is almost without peer in this technique.
Another aspect illustrating Dr. Haggard’s growing mania his story’s sexual element. At first during his narrative he is shy and reticent, always keeping the veil in place as is proper since he’s relating this tale to her son. Over time though, the telling becomes more frantic and explicit. At times he seemed to shift and talk not to James, but to Fanny directly. It was disconcerting and made me squirm. Not in a bad way though. I love it when an author can command my response so completely.
And where would a gothic tale be without its settings? First the hospital with its rigorous routines and schedules. Dr. Haggard is bound up so thoroughly in his work and pressures from his superiors that his new-found freedom with Fanny is palpably joyous. We revel when he does. Then, when all is over, he moves to a stalwart mansion perched on a cliff-side that will surely crumble in time. This perfectly mirrors Dr. H’s state and reinforces the impending doom. The nearness of the war itself adds the final note of danger that can’t be evaded. Fighter planes, bombers, soldiers and black-out curtains are important reinforcing aspects to the situation and his psyche. The ending is surreal and literally a bombshell. Perfect.
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