If you’re looking for a light, relaxing read, do not choose Margaret Pelling’s disturbing and provocative debut novel. Whilst it may be gripping - it had me reading long into the night – it takes the reader into a world of rape, desire and the ghost of a dead aunt, in a disconcerting blend of love story, marital breakdown and allotments.
That is not to say that Work for Four Hands isn’t good. It is. The seemingly ordinary life of the civil servant wife of an Oxford don is revealed to be seething with secrets, as interfering relatives, both dead and alive, just won’t allow the past to be past. The staples of escapist chick-lit are all here – the husband who doesn’t listen, the children who have fled the nest, the nice, attractive man with whom an extra-marital affair may just develop – but Pelling refuses to confine herself to stereotypes, instead exploring territory that most novelists tiptoe around, from incest to MS to sexual abuse. Yet the novel is not sensationalist, nor does it present us with a conventional ‘take’ on tricky subjects. Rather, Pelling guides the reader far past the boundary of political correctness, exploring the consciousnesses of Alison and Benedict as she traces the surrounding landscapes of Oxford, London and Hasfont in Wales.
At its simplest level, the plot is a love story, albeit a far from conventional one. Alison and Benedict are cousins with a past, and a secret. Estranged for decades, Benedict is determined to have Alison back in his life… but at what cost? And can she ever forgive him for what he did to her so many years ago? With circumstances forcing them together, it seems Alison may not be able to avoid the secret that she’s spent her entire adult life trying to forget.
The childhood nick-names – ‘Lion’ and ‘Ratty’ – are frankly annoying, and the conceit of the dead aunt haunting the cousins is a little laboured at times, but if you can get past this, the novel is a refreshingly different read, sure to make you challenge previous opinions and judgements. The constant first person narratives could become wearing, especially Benedict’s dry, self-conscious prose, were they not interspersed with flashbacks in an encouragingly life-like manner, in an acute portrait of memory and repression. The present tense stream-of-consciousness style is compelling, and Alison is a likeable protagonist, if oblivious to facts that are achingly obvious to both the reader and those around her.
A sort of female Ian McEwan with an unlikely passion for parsnips, Pelling reveals an intelligent take on the universal theme of star-crossed lovers, cunningly manipulating the workings of desire and denial in this startling work of fiction.
