Skios

April 2, 2012
Frayn’s latest (after Afterlife) is a wacky case of mistaken identity set on the luxurious Greek island of Skios. Nikki Hook is arranging the Fred Toppler Foundation’s annual gala, a celebration of culture attended by academic heavyweights and international dignitaries. But when she goes to the airport to pick up the keynote lecturer, Dr. Norman Wilfred, an eminent theorist and pedantic bore, she instead collects Oliver Fox. Oliver, a playboy who has come to Skios to seduce the beautiful Georgie, decides on a whim, when Georgie’s flight is delayed, to usurp Dr. Wilfred’s identity. Meanwhile, through a series of absurd misunderstandings, the real Dr. Wilfred is whisked away to Oliver’s borrowed villa where lonely Georgie waits. Nikki soon becomes enamored with the duplicitous lothario she believes to be Dr. Wilfred, while Dr. Wilfred falls for Georgie. The novel is a lacerating satire, with characters propelled by equal parts accident and self-interest in a world in which academic and political luminaries are as vapid as the fraud they fawn over. While entertaining, the absence of sympathetic characters keeps the stakes low and the dramatic tension weak. Agent: Carol Heaton, Greene & Heaton.

June 1, 2012
Frayn the farceur returns here, but the humor is so airy that at times it disappears altogether. Skios is a Greek island to which each year a world-renowned speaker is invited to enlighten a world-class audience of high-paying guests at the Fred Toppler lecture, one of the highlights of the Greek cultural calendar. This year the Fred Toppler Foundation has invited Dr. Norman Wilfred, a scientist who will speak on the scientific organization of science, a subject so rarefied that it's questionable if even he understands it. Coming to the island at the same time is Oliver Fox, a celebrity with a tousled mop of blond hair and a mischievous streak a mile wide. Fox's reason for the journey to Skios is more mundane than Wilfred's--he's planning to meet Georgie, an attractive woman he'd met at a bar and impulsively invited to spend some time with at a villa owned by people he barely knows. On arriving at the airport, Fox responds to the ubiquitous signs held by those providing transportation by impulsively pretending to be Dr. Wilfred. He's whisked off to the lush grounds of the Foundation to be greeted by Nikki Hook, personal aide to Mrs. Fred Toppler. Nikki finds herself unexpectedly attracted to Fox, whom she expected would be a rather dowdy middle-age scientist--as the "real" Wilfred is. Meanwhile, through a misunderstanding tied to the garbled English of a local taxi driver--in exasperation he winds up responding to the name "Phoksoliva," an inversion he doesn't comprehend--Dr. Wilfred ends up at the villa with the attractive Georgie, who has a propensity for nude sunbathing that Wilfred quite likes. From this extraordinarily thin plot device of mixed and mistaken identities Frayn spins out a gauzy tale that exhibits more tedium than hilarity.

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March 1, 2012

The setup: two men board a plane for the Greek island of Skios. One is the distinguished academic Dr. Norman Wilfred, a specialist in the science of management. He is on his way to deliver the annual guest lecture at the Fred Toppler Foundation, where well-heeled guests come for the illusion of erudition along with their Mediterranean cocktails and nibbles. The other is the hapless but attractively tousled Oliver Fox, en route to a romantic assignation. Upon arrival, while Norman is distractedly texting a heated response to a negative review, Oliver allows himself to be mistaken for the professor and goes off with his handler to try his hand at impersonation. And that's just for starters: multiple mistaken identities, twin taxi drivers, and look-alike suitcases and luggage tags create growing confusion and chaos. VERDICT Novelist/playwright Frayn (Spies; Copenhagen) offers a witty Rube Goldberg construction of a novel that also manages to deal with more serious issues like the global economic crisis. Think: Being There set to the staccato pacing of Noises Off, and hold onto your funny bones. [See Prepub Alert, 12/12/11.]--Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

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