With his first novel about looking after an engineered wood floor, and a second novel about what it is like to stay in a chain hotel, Will Wiles seems determined to corner the market in unpromising literary subjects. His latest novel, Plume, is about a chap who lives in a rented flat in London and who works in an office. Hooray! — the sainted few who are already Wiles fans will learn this with their hearts pumping with anticipatory happiness. Mine certainly did.
A quick summary is appropriate, as Wiles’s novels remain, for now, under-regarded. Care of Wooden Floors (2012) was exactly what it said on the tin. The narrator flies to a European city to house-sit an apartment of an absent friend called Oskar. Oskar is fastidiously house-proud, and demands only that the greatest care be taken of his specially installed wooden floor. In a mere eight days a classic comic inferno ensues.
The Way Inn (2014) was an exercise in surrealism, disguised as a satire on modern business conferences.
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