The Nothing

November 6, 2017
The narrator of Whitbread Prize–winner Kureishi’s caustic latest (after The Last Word) is a dirty old man named Waldo. He’s an angry, impotent, but highly successful filmmaker who suspects his younger wife, Zee, is having an affair with their friend Eddie, a flaneur who’s been hanging around claiming to chronicle Waldo’s glittering past. Waldo, still obsessed by sex but plagued with declining health, spends most of his days trapped in a wheelchair in his London apartment, cooking up schemes to catch Zee and Eddie, destroy the latter, and hold on to the former. He schemes with his actress friend Anita, but, after she helps him gather damning evidence about Eddie, he’s pretty sure she’s turned against him as well. There is not a decent soul or breath of fresh air within these pages; Kureishi rises fiendishly to the challenge of creating disagreeable characters, and true to form indulges in bald, unrelenting talk of sex acts and sex organs. There’s a bit of tormented Hamlet in Waldo, but little philosophy or meat in this wicked little revenge tale.

February 1, 2018

Initially, there were two: aging filmmaker Waldo and his 22-years-younger wife of 20 years, Zee. Bed- and wheelchair-bound for three years, Waldo has "been expecting to die any day," he admits. "I was enjoying my decline and slipping away cheerfully, and now this happens." Because now there are three: Eddie, "scamp, ligger, and freeloader" for 30-plus years, who's also a movie journalist and "self-avowed expert" on Waldo's work, seems to have moved in, not only into Waldo's London flat but into Zee's bed as well. Waldo improvises a revenge plan, which requires growing his players by two. So now there are five: Waldo's celluloid muse Anita and Eddie's manager, Gibney. With the help of whispering waiters, heavy BAFTA awards, and a final cup of scalding tea, Waldo relentlessly directs the scenes to ensure "posterity won't miss a moment." Writer/playwright/screenwriter Kureishi (The Buddha of Suburbia) enacts wicked vengeance on weakness and betrayal in a narrative starring a fading megalomaniac. VERDICT Libraries serving urban, cosmopolitan readers should prepare for ardent Kureishi fans; new readers, however, might opt for the author's earlier fare, as the characters here might prove too predictable, even downright tedious.--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

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