Books I Never Finished Reading

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The Silver Swan: A Novel (Benjamin Black)
- Highlight on Page 27 | Loc. 427-38  | Added on Monday, July 11, 2011, 06:22 PM

He stood for a moment in the middle of the living room, the key still in his hand, looking about at his things: the characterless furniture, the obsessively neat bookshelves, the artist’s wooden manikin on a little table by the window with its arms melodramatically upflung. On the mantelpiece there was a vase of roses. The flowers had been given to him, somewhat improbably, he thought, by a woman—married, bored, blond—whom he had seen for a not very exciting week or two, and he had not had the heart to throw them out, although by now they were withered and their parched petals gave off a faint, stale-sweet smell that reminded him disquietingly of his workplace [the morgue]. He turned on the wireless and tried tuning it to the BBC Third Programme, but the reception was hopelessly weak, as for some reason it always was in fine weather. He lit a cigarette and stood by the window, looking down into the broad, empty street with its raked and faintly sinister-seeming shadows. It was still too early for the whores who had their patch here—oh, well-named Mount Street!—though even the ugliest and most elderly of them did a brisk trade on sultry nights such as this. He could feel the first fizzings of the desperation that often assailed him in these summer twilights. A soft, small sound behind him made him turn, startled: a heavy petal had detached itself from one of the withered roses and had fallen, like a scrap of dusty, dark-red velvet crimped around its edges, into the grate. Muttering, he snatched up his jacket and made for the door.
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Amazing that a distinguished literary novelist who decided to let his hair down and write an "entertainment" would come up with something this dreary. Is he having a laugh?