Patrick McGrath is a master of dark, psychological torment. As early as his superb debut The Grotesque (1989) he indicated a flair for the Gothic, and this is brilliantly served by his graceful, formal, Old World prose. Martha Peake, the finest English novel published last year, is his least psychologically argued narrative to date. Instead, the tale unfolds more by detail and event than by brooding personality shifts. The Martha of the title is the stroppy daughter of Harry, once a splendid figure of a man, whose physique was shattered by an accident he caused. Humbled by the disaster, Harry, whose personality is dominated by echoes of Heathcliff and Hardy's Henchard, atones for his guilt by embracing humiliation. His story and that of his tragic, innocent daughter, whose love is his only salvation, is told to the Lockwood-like narrator by an ancient uncle whose storytelling is complicated by reluctance and obsession.
Atmospheric and strange.
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