Halfway through Susie Boyt’s sixth novel, the protagonist, Eve, comes home to find her new husband reading Freud. They have a discussion about psychoanalysis, criminals and guilt in a scene that feels oddly self-referential given that Freud is the author’s great-grandfather and the scene serves little other purpose in the novel.
Love & Fame is a novel slightly ill at ease with its purpose throughout. It opens with Eve heading off on her honeymoon with new husband, Jim. Eve is a failed actress – highly strung, deeply neurotic and overindulged: “Her parents adored her. She knew they chatted about her endlessly – she was their weather, their politics, their sport… She was almost their religion.”
Jim is an author who is writing a book about anxiety: “a biography, a history, a geography of anxiety (an algebra?), a rich, complex, far-reaching work”. The irony of their relationship – the anxiety expert marrying the anxiety-ridden young woman – is somewhat overshadowed by the emotional implausibility of their marriage. Eve is scathing of Jim from the outset: “Jim always said ‘of course’ or ‘absolutely’. He was that sort of person. He had an enthusiasm for enthusiasm.” It is unclear what Jim is attracted to in Eve given that he is “easy, mild, clever, well rounded” whereas she is at best a hysteric and at worst a misanthrope, so the reader can only assume he is seduced by her weakness – by her interest to him as a case study – though that motivation is only ever hinted at.
Eve’s story involves the death of her father, her relationship with her grieving mother and her gradual and begrudging adaptation to married life. Interspersed with Eve’s story is that of two sisters, Beatrice (Beach) and Rebecca. Having lost their mother when they were children, Beach and Rebecca now live in neighbouring apartments, with Beach continuing to assume emotional responsibility for her sister: “Beach’s entire career had been taken on the better to console her little sister. Beach worked as a grief counsellor, she had built her life around loss.”
The two stories connect when Rebecca, an ambitious journalist, infiltrates the home of Eve’s mother in order to get the scoop on Eve’s father’s death, while Beach becomes Eve’s grief counsellor.
There are clear parallels in the novel’s two central relationships: Eve and Rebecca are similarly self-infantilising and irritatingly self-absorbed, almost interchangeable in their neediness. Jim and Beach are both kind, empathetic and seem imbued with superhuman levels of patience. Both relationships share a similar tone and pace of dialogue: agile, sharp, full of quick-witted repartee, it is the kind of dialogue that belongs to the realm of fiction rather than real life.
There is a self-consciousness to much of Boyt’s humour, a sense that she is trying too hard to be funny: “She was a prim reaper” or: “She really was a deathspert, with degrees and diplomas in loss, in loss adjustment, lostness, lossology, lossitude…” The effect is to strip her characters of their authenticity and to strip the reader of their empathy.
Boyt’s best writing in the novel is not when she’s being flippant but when she allows herself to emote. There are some deeply moving passages on childhood grief, experiences of cancer, loss and loneliness. It is here – not in the humour – that Boyt’s writing really sings. In these scenes, there is evidence of a writer sensitive to human frailty, with a keen eye for important emotional details and a real skill at writing beautifully restrained, economical prose. If Susie Boyt’s next novel strips back the jokes and is afforded some emotional breathing space, I will be queuing up to read it.
• Love & Fame by Susie Boyt is published by Virago (£14.99). To order a copy for £12.74 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
