Caught in the Light
Literary genius
One of my most favourite novels is Past Caring by Robert Goddard, and since reading it I’ve collected a goodly number of his books on my shelves. They’re lengthy and intricate and absorbing though, so I only select them when I have the luxury of enough time to opt out of other commitments, or when I want a literary treat, or escape from reality.
The weather cancelled a couple of diary engagements recently so I seized the opportunity to indulge in a Goddard feast.
This time it was Caught in the Light … and I’m instantly captivated. He manages to convey an atmosphere of period brilliantly, moving effortlessly between the seventeenth century and the present. His plotting is spellbinding, layer upon layer of intrigue, and whether it’s a sinister menace, or a romantic interlude, or a psychological minefield, he grabs your attention and compels you to keep those 445 pages turning. A truly superb storyteller.
Photographer Ian Jarrett is in Vienna for a few days on an assignment when he meets and falls in love with a stranger in a red coat standing against a snowy background: Marian Esguard. So utterly captivated is he that he returns to London, leaves his wife, tells his daughter, and goes to meet Marian. But she never appears. She seems to have completely vanished. What’s more the six films of photographs he took are blank. What is going on?
So fixated is he that he vows not to take another picture until he can photograph Marian again. So, not only has he lost his wife and home, and his lover, and his dreams, now he is without a job. His single-minded search for her takes him back into history, and into a dangerous world of unscrupulous men and dabblers in the darkness of a disordered mind.
I became a ghost, hunting a ghost, haunted by a past I couldn’t forget and a future I couldn’t give up.
He is joined in his search by a Harley Street psychotherapist, Daphne Sanger, who is looking for the same woman, a client who spun her a very different story. Given the circumstances she agrees to breach her ethical code of conduct and share a vivid account of what this missing woman is enduring. Lies and deceit and betrayals abound. Everything swirls dangerously out of control. A man is strangled. Jarrett is caught up in this web of deception, trapped between the enigmas of the part and the greed and revenge of the present.
As the real truth unravels, and his existence is reduced to the narrowing circle of his search for his missing obsession, he becomes increasingly cagey.
There was secrecy bedded in my soul now, a furtiveness about my every word and thought.
And just when you begin to believe he’s about to realise his dream, the entire picture blows up in his face, and he has to acknowledge that he’s a mere puppet in an elaborate plot, his whole life being demolished around him. No one seems to be who they claim to be, yet he is the one who seems pathologically paranoid and deluded … except that he knows for sure he’s not, and he’s utterly determined to call the chief tormentor to account. And to save his sixteen-year-old daughter. But he’s at the mercy of a ruthless enemy who will stop at nothing to exact revenge. Murder, kidnap, suicide: it just keeps getting worse.
I’d love to reveal the amazing detail of what is really going on, but I absolutely can’t risk spoiling your enjoyment of this incredibly complex story. It’s a masterclass in writing. And whether its the origins of photography, or 17th century historical detail, or the medical facts around haemophilia, or the underpinnings of psychological derangement, the author writes with authority and assurance, never flaunting his research, but weaving fact and fiction together seamlessly with a sure hand.
As critics have already said, when it comes to duplicity and intrigue, Goddard is second to none. He’s a master of manipulation … hypnotic … unputdownable … spellbinding. Genius.