Sight Unseen

by Audrey Erskine Lindop

Normally the brilliant young artist Bryan Touhey liked women to be disturbing. But not quite as disturbing as his strange and lovely companion at lonely Pellings Manor. Sinister enough was her abject enslavement to the master of the manor, the handsome, cold-hearted Colonel Hawkins. Even more disquieting was her passionate belief in the occult. Her dark experiments in black magic. The uncanny ways her prophecies had of coming true. No wonder Bryan felt a chill run through his body the night she held out her arms to him. Did she want him as her lover, or her victim?

Genres: Romance

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1969

Reviews

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I was in my teens, Audrey Erskine Lindop was an author who'd written a string of bestsellers, some of which I read: The Way to the Lantern was a great historical novel about lovers trying to survive the French Revolution; The Singer Not the Song was an amazing novel, set in South America somewhere, about a missionary priest discovering that the local bandit chief, no matter how awful, was not unfriendable.

Recently I watched the psychological thriller I Thank a Fool (1962) and was reminded of Lindop's work. Off I went to the Passaic County Libraries website and found that the only Lindop novel they had was Sight Unseen.

"A Novel of Suspense it says on the cover.

Yeah, right.

Sight Unseen is a sort of comedy thriller -- long on the unfortunately very bad comedy, short on the thriller -- about artist Bryan Touhey, who's clueless in front of a canvas when sober but, when plastered, has a habit of waking up next morning to discover he's painted . . . well, not a masterpiece but something the Art Crit mob might think interesting. His socially well connected fiancee Sue doesn't think so; she keeps trying to sober him up. Her mother, whom Bryan nicknames The Old Baily (injoke for Brit readers), thinks Bryan's a bad influence on Sue. Suave art dealer Lt. Col. Guy Hawkins thinks Bryan's drunken daubs could be worth millions if properly marketed.

So Guy sends Bryan to Pellings, the remote house owned by Guy's mistress by the Romney Marsh, and hopes he'll paint. When that fails, thanks to Sue's inhibitory presence, Guy replaces the woman with his mistress's daughter Bethan, whom Bryan has until now regarded as "Ghoul Girl" -- subtle stuff, eh?

Bethan believes in spiritualism. Bryan believes in trying to get Bethan into bed. Bethan is convinced she's in love with Guy, even though he has little interest in her and, the times she did manage to lure him into bed, he was disastrous. Is Guy trying to kill Bryan to increase the demand for his paintings? Can Bethan ever be cured of her obsession? Can Bryan paint while sober?

Who cares?

And that's the problem, really. The publisher didn't, obviously: it was unusual in the late 1960s to eschew both copyeditor and proofreader, but Messrs. Doubleday (or their UK counterparts) very obviously did so here. Lindop herself obviously didn't care much, either: the text reads like a very hastily tossed off first draft. Immediately before this novel I read Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves, where it was obvious Kostova had made a real effort to get inside the artist's mind; Lindop, by contrast, obviously couldn't be bothered: her Brian is just a sort of confabulation of all the claptrap people who know nothing about artists believe about artists.

That's not the worst of this, really. Bryan is a narrator who can't let a sentence go without tacking on a lame attempt at wit. When I first started reading the book, I found this quite touchingly nostalgic: back in the late 1960s smartassery was often confused with smartness, and novels tended to reflect this. By about page 50, though, I was realizing why that particularly wearisome style -- the literary equivalent of Carnaby Street -- had fallen out of fashion.

Lindop's suspense novel I Start Counting is apparently very good. I'll try to find it next . . .

[Louise Culmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bryan is an artist who paints well only when drunk, and ekes out a living as a not very successful antique dealer. He has difficulty committing to his fiancee, Sue, and dislikes the fact that he is in debt to Sue's mother, who reluctantly helps him out with loans etc for Sue’s sake. an art dealer called Guy Hawkins begins to take an interest in Bryan's but Bryan is uneasy about his motives, and also attracted to Guy’s assistant, the eccentric Bethan. Guy persuades Bryan to go and stay at a house on Romney Marsh,so he can concentrate on his painting, and some very odd things happen there. This is an interesting but strange story, and I didn’t always understand what was going on (neither does Bryan). My favourite character is the stray cat, Dogberry, who insinuates himself into Bryan's life, and whose relationship with Bryan is the most entertaining part of the book.

[MacarioResendez · Rating 4 out of 5]

La historia tiene ese aire misterioso y seductor que te atrapa, con una tensión entre deseo y peligro que recuerda a las mejores novelas góticas. Me encantan esos relatos donde no sabes si confiar o temer al personaje, y esa sensación de incertidumbre te mantiene al borde. Justo esa misma emoción la sentí cuando probé https://pinup-casino.co.cr/; es una plataforma que combina adrenalina, diversión y confianza. Los juegos son variados, los retiros rápidos y las promociones realmente valen la pena. Si buscas algo emocionante y entretenido, este casino online en Costa Rica no decepciona.

[Margareth8537 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nicely written romance