Care of Wooden Floors
Will Wiles
Care of Wooden Floors is Will Wiles' debut novel. (Not that you can tell that it’s a debut.) It's slick, clever, and very very funny. The main character remains nameless throughout the novel, which adds, rather than detracts to the charm of the book.
Our hapless protagonist is invited to house-sit for his university friend, Oskar. Oskar is a successful composer, an organised man, happy and in control of his life. His flat is pristine and perfectly put together with expensive leather sofas, well-behaved cats and, of course, the faultlessly polished, extortionately priced wooden floors. On the contrary, our narrator is disorganised, messy and rather aimless.
Our narrator arrives anticipating a brief break in which he can relax and devote himself to writing his magnum opus. And his holiday would’ve been the quiet and productive experience he’d expected if he’d been a different man entirely- perhaps a similar character to the man whose house he was supposed to be looking after. But our narrator was not his host, Oskar- and this is where the problems begin.
Oskar, although absent from the flat, makes his presence felt with a series of exacting instructions on how to properly look after his property. Notes are placed in the most unexpected places- so the finding of the commands becomes a bizarre treasure hunt. By far the most detailed of the notes is the instruction on how to care for wooden floors. Our narrator thinks he will have no need for this information, until he spills red wine onto the kitchen floorboards. This disaster is only the first of many.
It is the sort of book which makes you squirm as you read. You become so aware of the inevitable destruction of Oskar’s perfect home that you wish to scream at the narrator, telling him to stop before it’s too late. Alas, your voice is not heard.
And, actually, you don’t want the narrator to stop at all. You want to read about the nightmarish quality that house-sitting has attained, you’re desperate to find out how on earth the narrator is going to get out of the mess of his own creation, and you need to find out whether Oskar is human, or some form of omniscient being.
Give it a read. You know you want to.
Many thanks to the fabulous HarperInsider for the reading copy.
