I have been raving about Care of Wooden Floors to Christine and my friends as I was reading it and I stayed up until 1:00 AM finishing it. It is a simple tale of apartment sitting that goes very, very wrong and I found myself drawn into the plight of the nameless narrator as perfection begins to crumble around him.
Care of Wooden Floors is very funny and droll but it is also quite terrifying. Comparisons have been made to Kafka, but Mr. Wiles work reminds me most of a very good T.C. Boyle story, expertly drawn out to novel length.
I would not have thought I would care so much about about some spilled wine and a floor. Wiles manages the tension of the story with great skill but more importantly, he takes the reader somewhere worth going.
While the book can certainly be read and enjoyed as a comic fable and cautionary tale, it also a very true meditation on the nature of friendship and the ways in which we know ourselves and others.
If you need a lot of action or a broad cast of characters, look elsewhere. But if you want a finely crafted story of order and chaos that will make you very, very careful about where you set your next glass of wine, take a chance on a quirky little novel called Care of Wooden Floors.
No comments:
Post a Comment