Unlucky in love

‘The most interesting novels are a bit strange,’ Kirsty Gunn once told readers of the London Review of Books. ‘They reject the predictable progress of conventional plotlines in favour of something that feels more risky.’ It’s surprising then that Gunn’s latest novel-ish offering is about unrequited love — a middle-aged banker for his glamorous landlady — set in the moneyed comfort of London’s Richmond. It’s a storyline so conventional, so timid, chick-lit would be embarrassed to claim it.

Evan Gordonston falls — at first sight, of course — for Caroline Beresford, familiar in PR and pony club circles, but who now spends her days mostly avoiding her husband, practising pilates, drinking cocktails and popping Ativan. In short, she’s ripe for Evan’s advances. He thought about penning this ‘great love story’ himself, but instead ropes in his childhood friend, Emily, to compose his feelings into a novel. She has the perspective to ‘get a bit of objective correlative, a bit of distance’.