Customer Reviews

The Tryst

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I cannot understand how this book rates only one star. I am a total Dibdin fan and I think it is by far his best book. From London punks trying to eat frozen pizza, literally, in a wintry squat to the well-to-do and (in truth) well-intentioned London middle class, and much in between, this is a complex and fascinating work. It contains more truth than thrill, yet frightens all the more so. And, in my opinion, it is all too short, hardly 200 pages.
It is hard to imagine anyone not falling into the grip of this realistic yet intensely poetic book. Not quite "horror" (speaking of the genre) yet it is utterly unsettling. It shows WWI with greater strength and insight than Saving Private Ryan (puh...leeze). The scenes from the 60's Brighton "youth culture" would be unfamiliar to any American "ex-hippie", but certainly no less "freaky." And when we are briefly and suddenly transported to college digs near UCLA, even if we are Americans, we can share the culture shock felt by a young English girl. She doesn't stay long. Its hard to pick my favorite moment or moments in this book, but how one young man manages his escape from the closet of a house slated to be torn down bright and early the very next morning....well...that is Dibdin at his very best and shouldn't be missed by any of his fans.
Don't let the deceptively slow first 27 pages fool you. The Tryst hits hard but does it's work with a disarming gentleness throughout. I beleive The Tryst to be a work of genius. One star? Outrageous!!! And WHY is it out of print?

This psychological thriller matches those of Ruth Rendell. It is the story of a psychiatrist and a patient, though the patient is not really mentally ill, he is just seeking the safety of a psychiatric institution. Aileen Macklin has troubles of her own but she has a soft spot for Gary Dunn and she is gradually unravelling what makes the boy tick. Dibdin in the meantime is letting the reader unravel the stories of his characters themselves.

The Tryst is an old-fashioned Gothic story crafted out of modern elements; the drug traffic of the 1970s, modern psychotropic medicine, agorophobia, squatters and de-institutionalization of the mentally ill. The Gothic comes in because all the secrets, coincidences, madness and hauntings take place within skillfully rendered buildings that echo the terror and disintegration they house.

Do I admire the book? Yes, it's very well executed. Was I interested throughout? Very much so, but once it's done, it's done. The old Gothic classics by Hawthorne and Wharton sweep me in completely, but the level of mental illness and lack of humor in modern versions (Castle by Robert Lennon, Sacrament of Lies by Elizabeth Dewberry) tend to keep me at an emotional distance from the characters. A notable exception to this is Iodine, by Haven Kimmel, a modern Gothic thriller that captured me completely.

The Tryst has memorable characters, but of the three main characters (the three who get to tell their stories) every single one of them is mentally ill in one way or another. Of the important peripheral characters, one is a narcissist and three are violent, manipulative drug addicts. Not a lot of laughs here! But the back stories are interesting, the haunting is haunting, and the plotting is tight.

Aileen Douglas is a psychiatrist and her patient is a seventeen-year old boy called Gray Dunn. She works in the Adolescent Unit of a psychiatric hospital, Maudsley Hospital, and she finds herself drawn to this mysterious boy who spent his youth with a group of squalid glue-sniffing squatters and who seems to be involved in a murder, the extent of which is still unclear. Aileen slowly discovers his true identity which provides a strange link with her own past.
A disturbing, eerie and menacing narrative which lacks the charm and the humour of the Aurelio Zen mystery novels.

I loved "Dirty Tricks" so this was the next Dibdin book I selected. It was kind of lost on me.

I'm a big fan of the abstract story (e.g., David Lynch movies, Bret Easton Ellis), so by no means do I need a linear plot, but I have to say that I have absolutely no idea what happened in the last 1/4 of this book.

Can someone post an analysis of the book with spoilers to explain the ending? I'd like to take another crack at it if the explanation sounds interesting, but I'm sort of lagging, because I was definitely not as big a fan of either the writing or the plot in this book as I was of the other Dibdin book I read. I was not sucked into this book at all, as I was in "Dirty Tricks," and I kept sort of trying to pick up the pace to get to where things would happen.

Dibdin is a gifted writer with a beautiful command of the language and I recommend "Dirty Tricks" highly - but I thought this one was rather slow in the first 2/3 and then when it finally picked up the pace it took a very bizarre turn and the rest of the plot (which became very abstract) went right over my head.

Would love it if someone could post a spoilery review so I could decide whether to give it another shot and a closer look.

Well, firstly because it deals with depressing subjects and depressing characters. And secondly, because it is depressingly written.

Certainly not one of Mr Dibdin's better works, and one he would do well to request the publisher to cease printing. Okay, that's a bit harsh, but I really did find very little to recommend about this book. I'm glad this wasn't the first Dibdin novel I read, else it would have been the last.

The characters aren't really very believable and they certainly don't arouse your interest or sympathy. The marital situation that the lead female protagonist seems embroiled in seems quite contrived. It also seems quite pointless in the context of the plot.

The style too veers between Gothic horror and modern psychological thriller and social commentary. It's as if the author couldn't quite decide whether to make this a mystery, a horror story, a supernatural story, a depressing (that word, again!) tale of marital mismatch or a depressing (enough, already!) tale of an unfortunate loser.

On reflection, I think the real failing of this short novel is that it doesn't make you care quite enough about any of the characters - they all seem too weird and disconnected from the real world (my real world, anyway) to make me want to give a damn. This one should have been gone with the wind.

Try "Dirty Tricks" by the same author, instead: far more satisfying.

I like the Aurelio Zen books very, very much and read this because of my high regard for Michael Dibdin. Be warned. This book is not in the same class. It's got all these coincidences that are meant to be supernatural, but I don't think it comes off as well as the Barbara Vine books (and I don't think alot of her). And it is sad and unsatisfying. Pick up an Aurelio Zen instead.

This book, quite simply, changed my life. Never before had I been taken so deeply in by a book, to the world I thought I wanted to be a part of. (I'd wanted to be a therapist, not a glue-sniffing street urchin). I've read this short novel over and over again, and it was this novel that made me rush out and explore the rest of Dibdin's works. The guy is a genius.