NOTE TO BOY

A teenager becomes the scribe of a former fashion icon in this debut literary novel.

Self-conscious 17-year-old Bradley McCreedy responds to an unusual job posting hung in the window of a newsagent’s shop in London: “Wanted!!! Urgent!!! Refined, respectable lady authoress seeks domestic assistant of same ilk. Usual rates.” When he calls the number, the daughter of his potential boss warns him he’ll be working for a dotty older woman, but that’s only the half of it. Eloise Slaughter lives in a stately but filthy mansion, as attentive to her wardrobe and makeup as she is inattentive to the dishes piled up everywhere. She hires Bradley not only to help straighten the place up—something the slightly OCD teen is glad to do—but also to help her with her memoirs. To hear Eloise tell it, she was the high priestess of London fashion in the 1960s and ’70s. Bradley thinks she’s off her rocker, but he takes the job, in part because Eloise doesn’t comment on the massive birthmark on his forehead. She’s certainly a dotty older woman—complete with a locked room he isn’t allowed to go into—but it turns out she isn’t lying about her past. At least not entirely. An unlikely friendship emerges, one that will pay dividends for both parties—at least so long as Bradley doesn’t overreach and bring the whole thing crashing down. Clark is a remarkable ventriloquist, alternating from the working-class vernacular of Bradley to the posh theatricality of Eloise with each chapter. Here, Bradley, who eventually moves into the mansion full time, comments on Eloise’s nocturnal activities: “She prowls at night. I hear her tip-tapping up and down the hallway. Mostly I reckon she gets up to fiddle with her puzzles—loves her jigsaws, Miss E—but sometimes she trots down the corridor in my direction. First time she done that, it got my heart pumping, I can tell you. Lying there, thinking, What if she comes in here and starts acting all weird an’ that?” The characters are richly drawn, and readers will quickly become invested in the odd couple, as individuals and as friends. The story is a pleasure all the way through.

A funny, immersive portrait of an unusual working relationship.