In the end, I chose ‘Wilt’ by Tom Sharpe to read. Primarily, I thought it would be an easily accessible start on my journey to scale my TBR pile, whilst I was aware Tom Sharpe was one of the favourite authors of someone I work with. I’d bought it mainly due to that reason, but had managed to sit on the book (not literally) for three years or so. I felt I needed to correct that.
Goodreads synopsis: Henry Wilt, tied to a daft job and a domineering wife, has just been passed over for promotion yet again. Ahead of him at the Polytechnic stretch years of trying to thump literature into the heads of plasterers, joiners, butchers and the like. And things are no better at home where his massive wife, Eva, is given to boundless and unpredictable fits of enthusiasm -for transcendental meditation, yoga or the trampoline. But if Wilt can do nothing about his job, he can do something about his wife, in imagination at least, and his fantasies grow daily more murderous and more concrete. After a peculiarly nasty experience at a party thrown by particularly nasty Americans, Wilt finds himself in several embarrassing positions: Eva stalks out in stratospheric dudgeon, and Wilt, under the inspiration of gin, puts one of his more vindictive fantasies into effect. But suspicions are instantly aroused and Wilt rapidly achieves an unenviable notoriety in the role of The Man Helping Police With Their Enquiries. Or is he exactly helping? Wilt’s problem -although he’s on the other side of the fence -is the same as Inspector Flint’s: where is Eva Wilt? But Wilt begins to flourish in the heat of the investigation, and as the police stoke the flames of circumstantial evidence, Wilt deploys all his powers to show that the Law can’t tell a Missing Person from a hole in the ground.
Review: In 2013, I hated reading ‘Gone Girl’. Whilst eminently a page turner, it left me completely cold by the end. I had no sympathy for either of the main protagonists and thusly didn’t care one jot about what happened. Neither the ending, nor any real interest in ‘what happened next’ could get me past the complete lack of interest I had by the time I read the final page.
Perhaps it is the near-six years removed from this disappointment and the passage of time in my own life turning me into a more beleaguered and bitter middle aged man (or so I – perhaps hyperbolically – believe), but ‘Wilt’ and its complete lack of truly likeable characters works completely in its favour. From Wilt himself, to his wife, to the Pringsheims, the police force and the professors who form the bulk of the moving parts of this novel, everyone is presented in a fashion that rarely lends itself to likeability, yet they are generally grounded enough in reality to at least earn some sort of empathy for the position they find themselves in. The mediocre mundanity of Wilt’s life, the frustrations of Inspector Flint at being outmatched and outmanoeuvred constantly in what feels like an open-and-shut case, the desire for betterment of Eva Wilt that often transcends rational thought; they are all at least understandable, if not empathetical.
When referring to things being grounded in reality, it is worth noting that this is a complete farce from beginning to end. Any story that hinges primarily on an inflatable sex doll as a core part of the plot couldn’t be anything other than farcical in nature, yet it is the darkness that permeates throughout ‘Wilt’ that lifts it above some of the lazier comedic tales over the years. With an opening chapter that begins with the main character fantasizing about killing his wife, Sharpe sets his stall out early and never really moves away from this mood even when a health concern over a batch of pork pies and an alcoholic priest finds its way into the narrative. It is this combination that makes it feel uniquely British in some ways: there is generally nothing many of us don’t enjoy about a dick or fart joke, nor often one that lands slightly nearer the knuckle.
Though the argument could be made for none of the characters really earning the right to be considered charming or amiable, there are some surprisingly rewarding moments that rise above the slightly more cynical tone that is often set. Seeing Wilt rise above his usual ordinary standing in life to make the most of his unfortunate incarceration is heartening in places, though you get the sense that things will only return to normal in the long term no matter how things are left for the poor sod. Similarly, Wilt and Eve even think fondly of each other for a page or two – absence perhaps making the heart grow fonder – but those thoughts are quickly repressed as normality ensues by the time things have been resolved.
Having finished the book and thoroughly enjoyed it, I feel that the concern for some readers will be singular – to what extent am I Wilt? Though the eponymous antagonist is almost too exaggerated to be representative of a single person, there are enough knowing parts about his nature that I feel many a person might guiltily recognise as a feature of their own personality. By the end of the book, he isn’t far enough away from me for my liking, but that’s what makes Sharpe’s characterisation so effective, even fourty years later.
Scaling the TBR Pile 