Switzy by Emma Cline: Leaving the party early

It’s a decade since I reviewed Emma Cline’s much heralded debut, The Girls, loosely based on the infamous Manson family and its horrific murders. Although I admired it, I’ve not read anything by her since. Switzy is very different following a man in his seventies as he travels to Zurich accompanied by his young assistant.

In and out, his brain went, like a radio tuning.

David is travelling to London by private jet, a gift from his friend Stearns, the only person besides Cody who knows that he will not be returning from Zurich. London was where David spent his honeymoon with his ex-wife, the mother of Rebecca who lives there with her husband and their son who David has rarely seen. Rebecca is clearly concerned by David’s condition but hardly knows this man who she’s not lived with since she was a child. His grandson is reluctant to spend time with this stranger who seems intensely interested in him yet distracted and a little odd. After two nights, one eventful, in the hotel that David had visited many times on business, they travel to Zurich. David has another goodbye to make. He’s not seen or spoken to Tom since the sadistic hazing Tom endured in their last days at boarding school, watched by David who did nothing to help the person with who he’d been most intimate. The following day, Cody accompanies David to his final destination.

He tried to think, I love you, to see what it scraped up in him. He tried to gather himself to match the seriousness of the occasion – maybe the last time he would be alone with his only child.

David’s journey unfolds in an interior monologue made up of short episodic paragraphs. He is, of course, an unreliable narrator, his mind already severely frayed, unravelling further as he travels. Although puzzled and confused by the present, his memories are often vivid although perhaps not accurate. What happened with Tom is left a little unclear, there are hints that David may also have suffered. Either Cody is an embezzler, waiting to get his hands on David’s money or he’s a solicitous and patient employee who’s remained loyal to David throughout his decline. It’s a claustrophobic narrative but highly effective as Cline slowly but steadily leads us towards its end. Her writing is strikingly polished, peppered with occasional flashes of dry black humour. I found her novel uncomfortably immersive but impressive, thoroughly deserving of its place on the Booker longlist.

Chatto & Windus: London 9781784746643 304 pages Hardback (NetGalley)