Customer Reviews

An evil streak

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Prior to "An Evil Streak", I had only read one of Andrea Newman's books, "A Bouquet of Barbed Wire", a book which aroused great controversy, especially when it was serialised on television, because of its sexual frankness. Particularly controversial was the fact that one of the characters was sexually attracted to his own daughter, although no incestuous relationship actually took place.

"An Evil Streak" also has at its centre an elderly male character sexually obsessed with (but not actually sexually involved with) a younger female relative. The main character is Alexander Kyle, an academic in his sixties. Kyle's obsession is with his niece Gemma, the daughter of his late brother, who was killed in the war. Rather than attempting to seduce Gemma in person, he effectively seduces her by proxy by engineering an affair between her and David Meredith, a handsome but struggling actor who is supplementing his meagre earnings by working as a domestic cleaner. Kyle, it should be noted, is bisexual and is also sexually attracted towards David, whom he has attempted unsuccessfully to seduce. Kyle is not deterred from his schemes by the fact that both Gemma and David are married. Indeed, he is spurred on by his dislike of Gemma's husband Christopher (a dislike grounded in sexual jealousy).

Like most control freaks, Kyle eventually loses control of the situation. Although David has been unfaithful to his wife Catherine with numerous other women, Gemma has hitherto always been faithful to Christopher, a respectable but dull, deeply religious but also deeply conventional doctor. Gemma falls passionately in love with David, believing that he returns her love and that he will eventually leave Catherine for her. He, however, is a self-obsessed, selfish individual who does not love her, any more than he loves Catherine or any of the other women in his life. Things reach a crisis when Gemma discovers that she is pregnant with David's child.

A theme running throughout the book is that of Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde". Kyle is engaged in writing a version of this work in modern English, and sees himself as Pandarus, with Gemma as Criseyde and David as Troilus (or perhaps with Christopher as Troilus and David as Diomedes, the Greek warrior who wins Criseyde's affections after she and Troilus are separated). Pandarus was, of course, Criseyde's uncle, although I felt the comparison with Kyle was perhaps unfair to Chaucer's character, who probably saw himself as a man doing his best to help a friend rather than a corrupter of other peoples' morals. Neither Troilus (a bachelor) nor Criseyde (a widow) was married. There is perhaps also a hidden Dantean reference. Gemma's mother is named Beatrice; Dante's wife was called Gemma, whereas Beatrice was the girl he had once known as a young man and who served as his spiritual guide in "The Divine Comedy".

I found "A Bouquet of Barbed Wire" cold and pretentious; the characters in that book resembled pieces pushed around a chessboard more than they did living human beings. The same could be said about "An Evil Streak", but there is an important difference. "A Bouquet......" was written in the third person, with Newman herself as the omniscient, chess-playing narrator. In "An Evil Streak", by contrast, Kyle acts as a first-person narrator, describing with sardonic glee how he manipulates the lives of the other characters, moving Gemma and David about like pawns on his chessboard. "An Evil Streak", in fact, written eight years later than "A Bouquet...", is a more mature and much better work. In the earlier novel the characters never came to life, whereas in the later work Kyle the cynical, perverted control freak is a well-realised villain. There is the same complex mesh of relationships, the same atmosphere of sexual perversity, but in "An Evil Streak" Newman shows a greater insight into human emotions and motivations.