"A Twin Room" by Jon Neal

This short novel grabbed me immediately. The narrator (it is written in first person using the past tense) is clearly on his own ... but he keeps talking about 'we'. He is preparing for a few nights away from home. He talks to someone else. But there is no-one there. This is a fantastic hook. I'd guessed what was going on by the end of the first chapter but by then I was firmly into the book.

The major characters are solid and perfectly sculpted and the setting of a seaside town which has seen different, if not necessarily better, days (which, in a neat use of pathetic fallacy, a little like the ageing narrator himself) is beautifully described. 

The pacing of the book is sound, with major turning points at the 25%, 50% and 75% marks. The action never flags.

I wondered whether the Hero's Journey had been a model for the plot. The action starts in the protagonist-narrator's 'ordinary world' which he is about to leave because of the 'inciting incident' of the loss of his partner. He then moves to the Seaside town where he meets Viktor, an enigmatic character who functions as a sort of 'sage or guide':he is encountered five times, twice enigmatically: as a waiter - or is he? - as a laundryman, as a carer, as a figure in a parade - or was it him? - and as the person whose words form the epilogue to the novel. He experiences trials - the estate agent, the boarding house kitchen, etc - which lead to a final life-or-death ordeal. The only major element of the trope that is missing is the return to the ordinary world at the end, but psychologically the hero has already achieved the holy grail of coming to terms with the problem that propelled him into the adventure. 

The  omnipresent Viktor is an enigmatic motif, a fleshed-out version of a spirit guide, perhaps?

I loved this this debut novel. It was a miniature jewel, showing considerable talent. I look forward to the author's next.

Selected quotes:

• "It had been one hundred and eighty-five days. A lifetime. And yet fleeting." (Ch 1; the first words) The second and third sentences seem to encompass so much about the general theme of the book
• "I eyeballed the bulging suitcase as if in some perverse Mexican stand-off with it. If it could speak, I wondered what it would have said to me." (Ch 1)
• "Its frozen tidiness made it look like a stage set of a play." (Ch 1)
• "I noticed that some walls retained the painted ghost signs of industries resigned to history: tailors, bakers, greengrocers." (Ch 2)
• "I thought of the promises I’d made. To never stop thinking of you. To never stop talking about you. And us." (Ch 2)
• "The hotels on the seafront embodied the changing fortunes of holiday resorts." (Ch 3)
• "Was I the author of this story? Or was it being written by somebody else?" (Ch 3)
• "Here I was, meant to be looking at one of life’s most expensive purchases, instead staring at the hair of a stranger stuck to a bar of soap." (Ch 7)
• "Life was ... to be grabbed fiercely with both hands like a rugby ball and hurtled down the pitch." (Ch 9)
• "The present? With each step down I tried to nail it. But all I could muster was somewhere blurry between past and future." (Ch 12)
• "‘But perhaps,’ he said, ‘every dream has to be paid for.’" (Ch 12)

This debut novel, a miniature jewel, shows considerable talent. I look forward to the author's next.

Update: The next book is a classic murder mystery called The Other Path.

Update #2: I was fortunate enough to be able to invite the author, Jon Neal, to talk the the Grove Theatre Book Club in Eastbourne on 21st February 2023. The feedback from the members was good - in particular, it was thought to be very good on bereavement - and Jon was very informative about his writing process. To my question about whether there was an intention to follow the Hero's Journey plotting schema, he replied that he had been thinking along folklorish lines. 

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God