Forgotten Book - First Person Plural

Sometimes it is rather harsh to describe the books I cover in this Friday blog post as forgotten But I don't think there can be any doubt that Richard Wiseman's First Person Plural qualifies for that description. It was published in Macmillan in hardback in 1975 and as far as I know it never made it into paperback. I don't know anything about the author (though I did know someone with the same name!) and as far as I know he wrote only one other crime novel, which was published by Hale.

I saw the book in a second hands shop and bought it on impulse, not knowing anything about it other than the tag-line: "Obsessive Love Led to Murder". I didn't have high hopes, for sure, but once I started reading, I couldn't stop. It's a short book, but I finished it very quickly indeed. It's certainly easy to read, and quite compelling.

The structure is clever. The story is told by three children, who are orphaned and left in effect to their own devices. I don't want to say too much about what happens, for fear of giving spoilers. The blurb calls it "a very unusual novel of suspense....The author displays marvellous invention and a compulsive narrative power..." This isn't an exaggeration. Wiseman may not have been an experienced crime novelist, but he could certainly write.

Interestingly, the novel anticipates a much more famous book with a similar scenario, Ian McEwan's The Cement Garden. Of course, the story develops in a different way, and of course McEwan is a better writer, but I do think it's a shame that Wiseman seems to have sunk so deeply into obscurity. On this evidence, he deserved a better fate. There are flaws in this novel, but I'm definitely glad I read it. 
POSTSCRIPT - thanks to Jamie Sturgeon, I've learned that Wiseman was a pen-name of Nick Bartlett, whose obituary is here: https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2008/jun/20/1

The Cement Garden

The Cement Garden was Ian McEwan’s first published novel. I became aware of him as a student, when I used to haunt the now-gone Paperback Shop in Broad Street, Oxford. In those days, I didn’t have much cash to buy fiction, but I did buy a copy of his debut book of short stories, partly as I was overawed by the fact that a writer who wasn’t so much older than me had so quickly established himself as a stellar talent. I was impressed by his writing then, and I still am.

Yet I’ve never read The Cement Garden, and my belated encounter with it has been through the film version made in 1993. The director was Andrew Birkin, brother of the legendary Jane, and the young boy is his son, Ned Birkin, while the female lead is Jane’s daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg. A family affair, then, very much in keeping with the dark story-line about death and incest.

I can’t claim that The Cement Garden is a bundle of laughs, and it isn’t really a crime story, although a crime is committed. In essence, it’s a study in family relationships, with echoes of The Lord of the Flies. When the widowed mother of four children die, they encase her body in cement to avoid the risk that the younger siblings will be taken into care. And the relationship between the teenage boy and girl becomes increasingly intimate.

I thought this was, despite its forbidding subject matter, a gripping film, and the performances of the four young people were excellent. This story is a good example of how the depiction of evolving relationships can be compelling, and can create plenty of tension, even when there is relatively little dramatic action. A crime novel needs a reasonable amount of drama, but watching The Cement Garden reminded me that sometimes less is more.