Putney
Summary (from the publisher): A provocative and absorbing novel about a teenage girl’s intoxicating romance with a powerful older man and her discovery, decades later, that her happy memories are hiding a painful truth.
A rising star in the London arts scene of the early 1970s, gifted composer Ralph Boyd is approached by renowned novelist Edmund Greenslay to score a stage adaptation of his most famous work. Welcomed into Greenslay’s sprawling bohemian house in Putney, an artistic and prosperous district in southwest London, the musical wunderkind is introduced to Edmund’s beautiful activist wife Ellie, his aloof son Theo, and his young daughter Daphne, who quickly becomes Ralph’s muse.
Ralph showers Daphne with tokens of his affection—clandestine gifts and secret notes. In a home that is exciting but often lonely, Daphne finds Ralph to be a dazzling companion for many years. When Ralph accompanies Daphne alone to meet her parents in Greece, their relationship intensifies irrevocably. One person knows the truth about their relationship: Daphne’s best friend Jane, whose awe of the intoxicating Greenslay family ensures her silence.
Decades later Daphne is back in London. After years lost to decadence and drug abuse, she is struggling to create a normal, stable life for herself and her adolescent daughter. When circumstances bring her back in touch with her long-lost friend, Jane, their reunion inevitably turns to Ralph, now a world-famous musician also living in the city. Daphne’s recollections of her youth and her growing anxiety over her own young daughter eventually lead to an explosive realization that propels her to confront Ralph and their years spent together.
Masterfully told from three diverse viewpoints—victim, perpetrator, and witness—Putney is a subtle and enormously powerful novel about consent, agency, and what we tell ourselves to justify what we do, and what others do to us.
A rising star in the London arts scene of the early 1970s, gifted composer Ralph Boyd is approached by renowned novelist Edmund Greenslay to score a stage adaptation of his most famous work. Welcomed into Greenslay’s sprawling bohemian house in Putney, an artistic and prosperous district in southwest London, the musical wunderkind is introduced to Edmund’s beautiful activist wife Ellie, his aloof son Theo, and his young daughter Daphne, who quickly becomes Ralph’s muse.
Ralph showers Daphne with tokens of his affection—clandestine gifts and secret notes. In a home that is exciting but often lonely, Daphne finds Ralph to be a dazzling companion for many years. When Ralph accompanies Daphne alone to meet her parents in Greece, their relationship intensifies irrevocably. One person knows the truth about their relationship: Daphne’s best friend Jane, whose awe of the intoxicating Greenslay family ensures her silence.
Decades later Daphne is back in London. After years lost to decadence and drug abuse, she is struggling to create a normal, stable life for herself and her adolescent daughter. When circumstances bring her back in touch with her long-lost friend, Jane, their reunion inevitably turns to Ralph, now a world-famous musician also living in the city. Daphne’s recollections of her youth and her growing anxiety over her own young daughter eventually lead to an explosive realization that propels her to confront Ralph and their years spent together.
Masterfully told from three diverse viewpoints—victim, perpetrator, and witness—Putney is a subtle and enormously powerful novel about consent, agency, and what we tell ourselves to justify what we do, and what others do to us.
Review: I received an uncorrected proof copy of this novel from HarperCollins.
This is a timely novel that explores the illicit romance that develops between Daphne and Ralph, who are 9 and 27 respectively when they meet. Told in three parts, that of Ralph, Daphne, and Daphne's childhood friend Jane, the relationship between Daphne and Ralph is explored several decades later, when Jane and Daphne reunite after years apart. Ralph initially meets Daphne in her parents' home in the London art scene in the 1970s and showers her with secretive gifts, notes, and affection until their relationship becomes physical when Daphne is 13 years old. Decades later, Daphne, confronted by Jane's urging that Ralph acted inappropriately, combined with the reality that her own daughter is approaching the age she was when she became sexually involved with Ralph, reconsiders her childhood entanglement with Ralph.
This is a disturbing novel to read that left me feeling uncomfortable throughout. Obviously, a relationship between a grown man and thirteen year old is wholly inappropriate but Zinovieff slowly builds the story and the characterization up in such a way that the reader can see exactly how such sexual grooming can happen with young children. For much of the novel, Daphne is carefree about her past entanglement with Ralph, insisting that it was a loving, consensual relationship and the product of a different time, before the age of consent became such an issue. Yet as the novel progresses, Daphne begins to reevaluate Ralph's actions. Ralph is certainly infuriating in his refusal to admit he acted in the wrong; "I worshipped Daphne, body and soul. I wasn't some Humbert Humbert obsessed with nymphets" (150). Despite his inability to accept blame or admit that he acted in the wrong, Ralph is made to be a somewhat sympathetic character at times. His feeble physical form and diminished figure can hardly stand up to the allegations and fury unloaded on him.
Interestingly, despite how despicable Ralph is in many ways, my least favorite character was Jane. Despite legitimate reasons to be angry, she comes across as self righteous and pious. For much of the novel, she seems to be seeking revenge on Ralph out of a childish jealousy that Ralph never lavished her with the affection that he heaped on Daphne. Although her perspective contributes to the novel as serving as the witness and outside view into the relationship between Ralph and Daphne, she doesn't seem like a true friend to Daphne or one with Daphne's best interests at heart.
This novel expertly explores an extremely complicated topic and does so in a nuanced and thoughtful way, while also creating fully realized characters whose very depth helps illustrate the complexity of this issue. This novel also hits on the topics of female friendship, mental health, memory, fidelity, and consent, which are extremely relevant in light of current movements in the news. Hailed as a modern day Lolita story, this novel certainly fits the bill.
Stars: 4
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