Late Call

Name: Late Call
Author: Angus Wilson
ISBN: 0140027912

by Angus Wilson

I love all his works. He usually has middle-aged, male protagonists of the upper-middle classes, and here, suddenly, you come across this ageing hotel manageress in her sixties who’s just retired. It is a completely sympathetic portrait of her giving up her job and moving in to live with her widowed son in a ‘new town.’ It is absolutely thrilling, the perspective of an older woman—she was a lot older than I was when I read it—coming to terms with a completely different life. There are the things she’s cross with, the things that bore, and the things she can’t manage — like the timer on the cooker. It is also a very brave book. You see how she’s absolutely determined to make the best of her life, despite the family problems around her. They do. Or they have to downsize or move in with their family. At the end of this book, Sylvia moves out again—she’s had enough of it. But because her son is widowed, she’s going to look after the grandchildren a bit. It does make the point that you need your own territory. How a middle-aged gay man knew about all that, I don’t know, but he does it very, very sympathetically. It’s interesting. It is one of the only novels that I know that is set in a new town—it’s not been a very good terrain for novelists. Angus obviously did a lot of research—I think it was a cross between Milton Keynes and Harlow. I’ve been fascinated by both those landscapes myself: the bits of them that do work and the bits of them that don’t. So I do think it is about a new start in a new town, and grafting the old onto the new. I found that a very good metaphor for beginning again. And he’s very perceptive about new town architecture—the odd church, and the fountain in the shopping centre. In the novel, Sylvia gets into a tremendous tangle with the central heating in the new house and with the automatic timer on the cooker. In my novel— The Dark Flood Rises —I’ve got a scene where one of my ageing characters is completely unable to control the DVD recorder. That is just like me. The new technology is all telephones and IT and so on. These challenges are worse now than they were in the 1960s and ’70s, and they make you feel old. She’s very good at texting, yes. It is both. For instance, I have found my e-reader to be a great blessing. It is so wonderful to have all those books in your bag all the time and to be able to buy a new one whenever you feel like it. It’s wonderfully convenient. I usually buy the newspaper [in hard copy], but when I’m abroad, I buy it online. It is wonderful just to be in your hotel bed in the middle of nowhere and get the morning paper. And a lot cheaper too. There seems to be a kind of universal access to mobile phones, so I think Sylvia would have been fine. In fact, it’s quite interesting that the automatic timers on the ovens aren’t nearly as popular as they used to be because they’re a nuisance. The mobile phone is really useful, whereas the automatic timer was never very useful because it ruined your food. The things we need, we learn to use.

Recommended by

Margaret Drabble

"I love all his works. He usually has middle-aged, male protagonists of the upper-middle classes, and here, suddenly, you come across this ageing hotel manageress in her sixties who’s just retired. It is a completely sympathetic portrait of her giving up her job and moving in to live with her widowed son in a ‘new town.’ It is absolutely thrilling, the perspective of an older woman—she was a lot older than I was when I read it—coming to terms with a completely different life. There are the things she’s cross with, the things that bore, and the things she can’t manage — like the timer on the cooker. It is also a very brave book. You see how she’s absolutely determined to make the best of her life, despite the family problems around her. They do. Or they have to downsize or move in with their family. At the end of this book, Sylvia moves out again—she’s had enough of it. But because her son is widowed, she’s going to look after the grandchildren a bit. It does make the point that you need your own territory. How a middle-aged gay man knew about all that, I don’t know, but he does it very, very sympathetically. It’s interesting. It is one of the only novels that I know that is set in a new town—it’s not been a very good terrain for novelists. Angus obviously did a lot of research—I think it was a cross between Milton Keynes and Harlow. I’ve been fascinated by both those landscapes myself: the bits of them that do work and the bits of them that don’t. So I do think it is about a new start in a new town, and grafting the old onto the new. I found that a very good metaphor for beginning again. And he’s very perceptive about new town architecture—the odd church, and the fountain in the shopping centre. In the novel, Sylvia gets into a tremendous tangle with the central heating in the new house and with the automatic timer on the cooker. In my novel— The Dark Flood Rises —I’ve got a scene where one of my ageing characters is completely unable to control the DVD recorder. That is just like me. The new technology is all telephones and IT and so on. These challenges are worse now than they were in the 1960s and ’70s, and they make you feel old. She’s very good at texting, yes. It is both. For instance, I have found my e-reader to be a great blessing. It is so wonderful to have all those books in your bag all the time and to be able to buy a new one whenever you feel like it. It’s wonderfully convenient. I usually buy the newspaper [in hard copy], but when I’m abroad, I buy it online. It is wonderful just to be in your hotel bed in the middle of nowhere and get the morning paper. And a lot cheaper too. There seems to be a kind of universal access to mobile phones, so I think Sylvia would have been fine. In fact, it’s quite interesting that the automatic timers on the ovens aren’t nearly as popular as they used to be because they’re a nuisance. The mobile phone is really useful, whereas the automatic timer was never very useful because it ruined your food. The things we need, we learn to use."

Ageing · fivebooks.com