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Unfinished Business
UNFINISHED BUSINESS focuses on an ordinary suburban office worker, fundamentally weak but always keeping his eyes fixed on some horizon where a heightened, romantic, better world must surely exist. Faced with the regular stuff of life - work, aspiration, marriage, age, divorce, bereavement - his ordinary plight is sharpened, becoming increasingly urgent. Having lived in a modern condition, confusing pleasure with happiness, wanting the dream to deliver, what do you do when you notice the shadows begin to lengthen on the lawn?
- GenresFiction
182 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 19, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 24, 2023
A few months ago I read Perfect Tense by Michael Bracewell for the first time. I was surprised that I had taken so long to find it, given how much I enjoyed both the setting and the humour. An office worker in the City of London was a perfect character type for me, given that I had been one myself for several years and had not only walked the same routes described in the book, but had also felt the same stifling emotions from too long spent in the same stupefying environment. The book’s narrative and my own overlapped in time and place and so it spoke to me. To see Bracewell’s new book, his first foray back into fiction for twenty-one years, return to some of those themes was an exciting discovery. The cover photo looking down Lothbury from Gresham Street along the back of the Bank of England made me nostalgic for roads I had often walked myself.
I should note that when I refer to the City of London I am not talking about the whole of London, but a specific area in the East of the central district which has for centuries been the financial heart of the city, where numerous banks and financial institutions were once headquartered. It is an area which corresponds very closely to the old Roman city that lies several metres below the current street level. Descend to the basements of some modern buildings and you will find the long lost past hidden there.
Our new protagonist in Unfinished Business in called Martin Knight.
That sense of falling short, of not quite reaching where he wants to be, is the central theme of the book. A destination glimpsed but never arrived at. The recent years of change in the job market, where jobs and titles come and go in a fleeting blink, is beautifully expressed by Martin in this paragraph:
While Martin’s life appears to be constantly failing, his glamorous ex-wife Marilyn is quite the opposite. Chapter five plays this wonderful game between the two characters as we flip back and forth between their very different days. Marilyn has dressed carefully to meet a man for a first dinner date. Martin is visiting his mother who still lives in their childhood home, redolent with memories of “depressed public schoolboys”. The adolescent memories, the posters on the bedroom wall, the collected items. Two lives that were once carefully entwined now functioning separately and quite differently. Having carefully observed the minute gestures of Marilyn’s dinner date the next chapter provides a poignant contrast. Martin takes his dinner alone. A large G&T, half a bottle of Chianti and some sparkling water. To be followed by another half bottle. And a couple more glasses.
For Martin his evening ends lying face down on the concourse of Liverpool Street Station, followed by the swiftly delivered diagnosis of needing open heart surgery. This forces him to rethink who and what he is. But fate has even more curved balls to throw. More unexpected directions for his life to take. A sadness pervades the final chapters. It gives Martin chance to reflect from his hospital bed on what might have been but for his transgression, which he describes in perfectly balanced tones:
This novel does not have the sparling humour of Perfect Tense, but what it does have is razor-sharp observation of people and the ways they live their lives. The descriptions and observations are second to none. Read the book just for these.
I should note that when I refer to the City of London I am not talking about the whole of London, but a specific area in the East of the central district which has for centuries been the financial heart of the city, where numerous banks and financial institutions were once headquartered. It is an area which corresponds very closely to the old Roman city that lies several metres below the current street level. Descend to the basements of some modern buildings and you will find the long lost past hidden there.
Our new protagonist in Unfinished Business in called Martin Knight.
His common place talents – mathematics, doing well in interviews for jobs – were, he felt, so at odds with his soul. He was a poet manqué, he had told himself. From that, clearly, all else proceeded…
That sense of falling short, of not quite reaching where he wants to be, is the central theme of the book. A destination glimpsed but never arrived at. The recent years of change in the job market, where jobs and titles come and go in a fleeting blink, is beautifully expressed by Martin in this paragraph:
And here I am, Martin reasoned, and I don’t really know what my job is anymore…As for his “skill” – it had been known as so many things over the years; been in and out of fashion, regarded as both Saviour and Antichrist: logistics, IT, datamanagement, tech, systems analyst…Now it was everything and nothing, like most things.
While Martin’s life appears to be constantly failing, his glamorous ex-wife Marilyn is quite the opposite. Chapter five plays this wonderful game between the two characters as we flip back and forth between their very different days. Marilyn has dressed carefully to meet a man for a first dinner date. Martin is visiting his mother who still lives in their childhood home, redolent with memories of “depressed public schoolboys”. The adolescent memories, the posters on the bedroom wall, the collected items. Two lives that were once carefully entwined now functioning separately and quite differently. Having carefully observed the minute gestures of Marilyn’s dinner date the next chapter provides a poignant contrast. Martin takes his dinner alone. A large G&T, half a bottle of Chianti and some sparkling water. To be followed by another half bottle. And a couple more glasses.
For an hour or so, he was suspended, weightless, in a pause in time that was meaningful and poetic and enabled him to see immense distances. He simply had to stay forever in this stilled floating moment, in which, everything was benign and comfortably significant.
For Martin his evening ends lying face down on the concourse of Liverpool Street Station, followed by the swiftly delivered diagnosis of needing open heart surgery. This forces him to rethink who and what he is. But fate has even more curved balls to throw. More unexpected directions for his life to take. A sadness pervades the final chapters. It gives Martin chance to reflect from his hospital bed on what might have been but for his transgression, which he describes in perfectly balanced tones:
But real anger, such as Martin had provoked when he made his fatal confession – that had been impossible to foresee.
Among the worst things about the terrible scene had been the pain and violence that Marilyn’s fury inflicted on herself. Her orderly, cool, quiet world shattered like the crystal bowl: the life she had built so carefully – even if she could take six months to choose a cushion cover … Had they grown old together such traits would surely have become fond family jokes…
Such an imagining – as Martin had reflected many times, on platforms and trains, in restaurants and bars – confronted the home-wrecker, himself, with the immovable thought that suppose he had simply forgotten that disastrous encounter with Alison Hayes? Just pretend it never happened.
But it was impossible to wholly forget the hotel room in which he and Alison had f**ked – there was no other word – surrounded by Empire-style furniture and gilt-framed fake engravings of botanical specimens. And how willingly they had pursued the preceding evening into mounting suggestiveness, as tawdry as it was alluring, there in the Polo Bat of the Westbury hotel.
Alison, chance-met in regent Street – ‘Oh, hello!’ – whom he had worked and flirted with, briefly and timidly, when? Ten, a dozen years earlier? When he had not known Marilyn was pregnant…
Over four or five hours the evening had become a succubus; he, playing the man about town, unable to draw back from her flirtatiously mocking, lightly oiled compliments – each one a dare. Both of them editing their lives to allow the sleazy dance to continue. The intimate darkness of the spacious bar had conjured an illusion of some vague international anywhere…
And thus Martin’s life with Marilyn had reached its end – as if in darkness, he felt.
This novel does not have the sparling humour of Perfect Tense, but what it does have is razor-sharp observation of people and the ways they live their lives. The descriptions and observations are second to none. Read the book just for these.
June 13, 2023
Exquisite, especially the description of a concert years ago, more than forty in fact, where the description of the singer is so clearly Ian Curtis.
I wrote a longer, admiring review which suddenly disappeared when my phone glitched. So it goes.
This is outstanding. You can tell that tragedy is probably waiting and then, when it comes crashing in, it’s just not the tragedy you were expecting. And if that’s not what life is like then what is?
I wrote a longer, admiring review which suddenly disappeared when my phone glitched. So it goes.
This is outstanding. You can tell that tragedy is probably waiting and then, when it comes crashing in, it’s just not the tragedy you were expecting. And if that’s not what life is like then what is?
February 20, 2023
Late middle aged bloke with a drinking problem fancies himself as a flaneur, reminiscing about relationships and his divorce. Accurate London psychogeography. Bland Bret Easton Ellis descriptions of outfits. Packs an emotional punch, with a ludicrous coda.
March 1, 2023
This book felt unfinished.
Snobbish.
Very choppy, as one’s thoughts do flow as we age.
Snobbish.
Very choppy, as one’s thoughts do flow as we age.
August 19, 2023
Bracewell is obviously an extremely talented writer. His turns of phrase are often delightful, but without being overworked.
But unfortunately there just was not enough narrative interest in this book. Most of it read like someone describing old photographs over the phone. New vignettes would come seemingly out of nowhere, and I'd be left trying to work out how they fitted in. He seemed to remember halfway through that story is important, so plonked a couple of big events in there but by then it was too late. I only finished it out of pigheadedness really.
I get that the book is supposed to be reflective and retrospective but there was just not enough interest sparked in the subjects of the reflections.
The tone of wistful nostalgia is akin to that of McEwan's Lessons, but that has a brilliant dramatic backbone to hang the fluff off. Reading about depressive hopeless drunks is also an acquired taste.
Sorry Michael!
Did you disagree? Let me know what you think of Bracewell...
But unfortunately there just was not enough narrative interest in this book. Most of it read like someone describing old photographs over the phone. New vignettes would come seemingly out of nowhere, and I'd be left trying to work out how they fitted in. He seemed to remember halfway through that story is important, so plonked a couple of big events in there but by then it was too late. I only finished it out of pigheadedness really.
I get that the book is supposed to be reflective and retrospective but there was just not enough interest sparked in the subjects of the reflections.
The tone of wistful nostalgia is akin to that of McEwan's Lessons, but that has a brilliant dramatic backbone to hang the fluff off. Reading about depressive hopeless drunks is also an acquired taste.
Sorry Michael!
Did you disagree? Let me know what you think of Bracewell...
January 27, 2023
If TS Eliot had written Mrs Dalloway and J. Alfred Prufrock had seen "The Damned in some shitty pub."
Best novel of 2023.
Best novel of 2023.
June 8, 2023
gorgeous writing but nothing else going for it other than that
November 6, 2023
The title turned out to be only too apt.
Currently reading
January 7, 2024Currently reading.... So far so British boring. I don't expect it to get any better. I was duped by the mention of Proust on front pull quote
March 14, 2023
“For recently, he fancied, he had become aware of an overview - a symptom of age, no doubt; his life presented to him as though by destiny, with an unnerving and unexpected shrug - ‘There you go then’ - dismissive, final.”
Focused on Martin Knight, a London-based office worker with a job he no longer understands, Unfinished Business looks at a life unfulfilled and the physical and emotional effects of loneliness and modern coping mechanisms.
Sometimes in the evening, I finish work, potter downstairs and put on BBC Radio 6 Music. I’ll keep it on all evening in the background, then at some point will become aware of what’s playing and think to myself “this isn’t meant for me, this is meant for middle aged hipster men”. I tell you this, because it’s a feeling not dissimilar to how I felt at certain points in this book.
That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it. This book has some really beautiful language in it, and does a great job at examining those feelings and parts of life that we churn through unconsciously (one of my favourite types of writing). While short in length, this book isn’t one to inhale in a single sitting. I spent a lot of time chewing over every word, needing to take my time to digest it and re-read sentences again to feel the full impact.
The end of this book felt unnecessarily tortuous to me (give the man a break), but overall I found this book to be perceptive and poetic, regardless of perhaps not being the target audience.
See all the books I read in January.
Focused on Martin Knight, a London-based office worker with a job he no longer understands, Unfinished Business looks at a life unfulfilled and the physical and emotional effects of loneliness and modern coping mechanisms.
Sometimes in the evening, I finish work, potter downstairs and put on BBC Radio 6 Music. I’ll keep it on all evening in the background, then at some point will become aware of what’s playing and think to myself “this isn’t meant for me, this is meant for middle aged hipster men”. I tell you this, because it’s a feeling not dissimilar to how I felt at certain points in this book.
That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it. This book has some really beautiful language in it, and does a great job at examining those feelings and parts of life that we churn through unconsciously (one of my favourite types of writing). While short in length, this book isn’t one to inhale in a single sitting. I spent a lot of time chewing over every word, needing to take my time to digest it and re-read sentences again to feel the full impact.
The end of this book felt unnecessarily tortuous to me (give the man a break), but overall I found this book to be perceptive and poetic, regardless of perhaps not being the target audience.
See all the books I read in January.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews