Plaything Author : Bea Setton ISBN-13 : 978-0857528001 Publisher : Doubleday Guideline Price : £18.99 A few years ago, I went on a date with a guy who, within the first few minutes, told me how he always took his first dates to the same bar and, if possible, sat in the same seat, the very one we were sitting in. How romantic, I thought, wondering how quickly I could cut and run.
It’s the sort of remark that Caden, the boyfriend of Plaything’s narrator Anna, might revel in as he can scarcely get through a sentence without mentioning his ex. She tries not to let this bother her but when his comments begin to sound more like comparisons than memories, they sting. Bea Setton crafts a brittle protagonist in Anna.
A Cambridge PhD student who spends her days euthanising mice, she doesn’t fulfil the traditional notion of feminine beauty, being tall and broad, with hair that defies taming, and a brain that intimidates her male colleagues. And yet Caden, a looker, falls for her so quickly that soon they’re living together, with Anna trying to ignore the ex’s toiletries that remain lined up along the bathroom shelves and the spare room filled with boxes of her belongings. READ MORE Dermot Healy: Poetry in coastal erosion Short stories from Kafka to the Kafkaesque: making strange again David Nash wins Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize The Racket by Conor Niland: Lonely tennis locker room conveyed with deft touch “People often pretend not to care about beauty when i.
