Reading the 20th Century discussion

Welcome to our August 2025 buddy read of....




The Trick of It (1989)


by


Michael Frayn



All are welcome to join in - a mere 171 pages so it should be a quick and interesting read



He knows everything about her before they meet: the make of pen she writes with, her exact height, the various honorary degrees she holds. He knows more about her nine novels and 27 short stories than she does herself. Naturally--he has devoted his life to studying and teaching them, and he reveres them. Also, he is four times as clever as she is.

The Trick of It is a comic and painful voyage of exploration into the creative process and the feelings it arouses in others. The humble academic disciple finds himself admitted to his subject's life, and off to this oldest friend go a series of dispatches--by turns awed and patronising, reverential and jealous, disingenuous and appallingly frank.

I was just organising my reading for the next few weeks and am planning to read this soon, so am bumping the thread. I was unsure there was one, but of course there is. Thank you, Nigeyb.

I don't plan to read this one. I think I've read all the Frayn I want to for now but, as so often before, it's quite possible that this discussion will lure me back in to the Frayn fold

It seems a good book to read while at a book festival!

If you're reading it soon Susan I'll try to start when you do

Hi Ben, that sounds great. I MEANT to read, but there is never really time, is there? Harrogate is just so crazy busy. I found myself re-reading Mrs Dalloway in the few moments I had.

Have you started yet? I will try to start this week.

No, but let me know when you do and I'll start then.

I've started it. Good to be communing with Mr Frayn again.

Yes, I have started too, although I have several books on the go and little reading time now I am back at work.

Such an interesting idea to have an academic who is obsessed with an author and for her to meet him through an invite. Her knowing nothing about him, him thinking he knows everything about her.

I found the first chapter a little heavy going, but I’m used to it now and enjoying it. I love the way he makes fun of the academic world.

I’m reading a physical book and I miss my usual digital underlining, note taking and searching but I’m trying to note all the uses of “trick” and similar words. Frayn is always such fun with wordplay.

Not very far in, but our academic, Richard, seems such a wounded character - he blusters, but is very unsure of himself. I do love an epistolary novel, though. Frayn is clever in using letters that Richard may not post, to allow him to have a rant!

Finished. The usual cleverness. I don't think it ranks as high as the others, but I do admire it, and thinking about it and going back through it I'm smiling at how it's constructed and the contrasts he draws between the academic systematiser (leach) and the creator.

The mentions of "trick" picked up again close to the end, but very little in between.

And of course the novel is the letters created by the academic systematiser (leach). What is the form? Very clever. "Wheels within wheels", as one of my law firm mentors used to say.

The chapter with "Bloody Saturday" was very confusing, as it was meant to be. Have you sorted it out? I haven't. Am we meant to?

I am halfway in. They have just got married at this point.

I am enjoying it very much - Frayn is just fantastic.

Are you referring to the time when Richard just happens to arrive at her house and gets dragged in, when there is chaos going on? It's never explained is it, but I guess life is like that, isn't it? Just events that happen, matter at the time and are then forgotten.

Spoiler free review posted. I'm open to upgrading my opinion based on your reading.

I have my thoughts about that scene, which I will discuss when you've finished. I'll be interested in your opinion!

I had to go out yesterday but managed a couple of chapters - I know it is short, I'm sorry, I've just been very busy lately.

Richard's friend has had a child. Richard's wife has produced her latest novel. There is a sense that being closely involved with her, as he is now, is creating some kind of resistance in him for her work. Ah, that is what celebrity is for I guess - to create a distance that ensures mystique. If that is gone, what's left?

There are bits and pieces I don't get. In one place when he is writing his stag party drunken letter, he refers to ending up "married to the wife of one of the major writers of our time. So he would be the "major writer" and his wife would be married to the wife of one of the major writers of our time? But it's his wife who is one of the major writers of our time, and he's married to her. And he refers to her as MajWOOT and wants to name their country house MajWOOT.

So is he referring to himself as the "wife"? Is he putting himself down? Or is it just cleverness or drunken attempted cleverness?

I also like the name they settled on for their house, which was the original name they didn't change. Windy Ways, which describes the windy writing style of our poor pathetic academic.

Ben wrote: "There are bits and pieces I don't get. In one place when he is writing his stag party drunken letter, he refers to ending up "married to the wife of one of the major writers of our time. So he woul..."

I think Frayn overdid the cutesy cleverness in a number of places with this book and I reached a point where I just wanted to finish not caring about the details. There were elements I liked in this book, but I was overwhelmed by what for me is a clichéd character in the overly sarcastic semi smug professor who is written as a parody but one can sense the ego of the semi smug author writing the character and I find most of these types unfunny and draining. Here despite good writing, Frayn's straining to be clever and witty, just tired me. I cannot fathom why he decided to write this novel with only one voice, and thus making all other characters props in the way the main character describes them. I even tire of my own voice after a short time. Having to listen to another's for the length of the novel was too much. I gave the novel three stars which means I found it average, not hateful, or poor writing, but so far it ranks last in my hierarchy of this month's books and this only reflects my present taste, so if you loved the book, thumbs up to you. My opinion is not meant to persuade, just explain.

I have to say that, having finished it, I enjoyed this. Yes, Frayn was very tongue in cheek - Richard felt emasculated, I think. JL was famous, she paid for the house, she was feted, interviewed, filmed. Richard thought that, by marrying her, he could gain equality, but that didn't happen. I thought it seemed a little dated for 1989, when it was written, but then again, in the 1980's, as I recall, having lived through those years, there were definitely more fixed gender roles and most books that I found reviewed in newspapers then, were written by, and about, men.