Forget its lurid cover

Press, 2 November 1985, Page 20

Forget its lurid cover

Diane Prout)

Wanting. By Angela Huth. Pavanne Paperbacks, 1985. 233 pp. $8.95

(Reviewed by

"Wanting” is Angela Huth’s first novel for some years. The lurid and comically grotesque cover is extraordinarily inappropriate for a story which turns out to be anything but another simple farce of unrequited passion. The names of the anti-hero and hapless heroine (Harry Antlers and Viola Windrush) do nothing to dispel the illusion that this is a rollicking sexual romp which roves between New York, London and Norfolk. Harry Antlers, the physically repulsive, aging film-director with an inexplicable attractiveness to women, sets his romantic sights on a young English rose who seems to have nothing more going for her than a flair for doing up old houses and a delicate air, which soughs after her long-lost

Irish lover Richard, hopelessly, yet honourably married to a mad wife. When Harry’s eccentric desire goes beyond the mere extravagance of sending his beloved 200 red roses, the comedy falters and borders menacingly on violence and tragedy. The bizarre and frightening elements of psychological obsession are offset by those of quite enchanting and lyrical beauty as the writer explores the deepest emotional and spiritual needs of her characters. Angela Huth’s writing has a luminous, almost fey quality. Horror and fear have a way of becoming transmuted into pathos and absurdity. Don’t be put off by the jacket design “Wanting” is no zany battle of the sexes by the likes of Tom Sharpe. It is a haunting little fable, lit with tenderness and humour, a sensitive study of wants and desires which fate may sometimes choose to fulfill.