This gripping tale of power, cruelty and all the consequences – the title’s reference to Joseph Conrad’s novel hints at the themes – was first published in 1973, and it seems extraordinary that it has been largely forgotten until now. In a new edition, with a foreword by Ottessa Moshfegh, the novel describes, to begin with, the upper-class English childhood of Giles Trenchard, referred to in fairytale cadences as “the Prince” – his mother and father are “the Queen” and “the King”.
It’s not very long before we see behind the cheerful confidence of the narrative voice, which treats the good side of Giles’s upbringing (he is “fed… with kisses and licks of sugar”) like the bad: “On his narrow shoulders and tight little bottom there are pale marks of old bruises.” Life around him is baroque, with his grandfather’s sexual activities a particular jaw-dropper.
