The Body by William Sansom (Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1949)
William Sansom is a smart, distinguished writer — his prose is obviously labored over and often (but not always) interesting and impressive. But this novel, his first, is not a success — in fact, it fails rather quickly and consistently.
Henry Bishop lives with his rather dim but pretty wife Madge in one of London’s near suburbs. They are childless, sleep in separate bedrooms, and have been happily but passionlessly married for twenty years (Henry is 45). One day Henry sees a man spying over the garden wall, watching Madge at her toilette through an open bedroom window. Henry quickly comes to believe that this man and his. wife are having an affair, and spends the rest of the book trying to catch them in flagrante delicto, with rather tepid and unremarkable results.
To confirm his suspicion, Henry ingratiates himself with all the people who live in the rooming house next door. They are not a very interesting lot and shed very little light on his wife’s amorous affairs. The only interesting tension I felt in the book concerned Henry’s sexuality. It seems quite clear to me that he is a (very) repressed homosexual, but of course this is only cryptically hinted at: he might like to have an affair with the gent next door himself, and he makes a subtly homoerotic visit to a gymnasium in London where lads in various states of undress are perfecting their physiques.
I might read another book by William Sansom, but I wouldn’t put it at the top of my list.
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