OK, Mr. Field by Katharine Kilalea

First published in Great Britain in 2018; published by Crown/Tim Duggan Books on July 17, 2018

Mr. Field is a pianist who can no longer perform, having injured his left wrist in a train crash. He uses his injury settlement to buy a house he saw in a newspaper article. The house is owned by Hannah Kallenbach, the widow of the architect who designed it.

The House for the Study of Water is built on an incline, supported by stilts, and can only be reached by climbing a staircase. It is a replica of the Villa Savoye, but it has a view of the sea near Cape Town rather than a view of rural French landscape. The House seems to be in a constant struggle with wind and decay. Perhaps it is a struggle with the outside world. The narrative frequently asks the reader to consider the relationship between people and houses, between people and water, between houses and water. The coastline is eroding, a common metaphor in recent novels for unstoppable change that is an inevitable part of life.

Mr. Field’s lover, Mim, joins him in the house for a time, although she clearly thinks he is a fool for buying it. Mim’s sudden disappearance from the story, leaving her computer and notebooks behind, is something of a mystery. She has driven somewhere, and Mr. Field misses her sometimes, but not quite enough to call her or to search for her.

The story is one of isolation and loneliness, despite the companionship Mr. Field conjures from Hannah Kallenbach, whose continued residence in the house he imagines, as if “the house had ingested some aspect of her presence.” In a dream, Hannah discusses Mr. Field as if performing an autopsy, saying that little is known of the pianist’s heart, except that “once he felt differently” but “these days, he mostly feels the same.” In another dream, a bird describes him as “part of the unhappiness that’s come apart from the total mass of unhappiness.”

Mr. Field sits alone every day, listening to construction sounds and trying to imagine what might make them (e.g., “stones being cleaned in a large washing machine”). He plays the piano, noting that his right hand misses the way his injured left hand used to play. He watches the sea and engages his memories of his first piano teacher, of his mother listening to Chopin, of Mim. He takes in a stray dog who seems to have an unexplained connection to Hannah. He takes evening drives, sometimes passing Hannah’s current house, often sneaking into her yard and sitting outside a window, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Sometimes he eavesdrops on mysterious conversations she has with a man who visits her frequently.

The reader might ask whether Mr. Field’s obsession with Hannah is unhealthy, or whether the obsession instead gives him a reason to continue living. Mr. Field feels a pang whenever he sees her, “like young love or immature love or new love, love but with a tragic aspect.” Yet Mr. Field makes no attempt to interact with Hannah, perhaps because that would be a step toward losing her, just as he fears losing the newly-acquired dog. (All books are made better by the inclusion of a dog, and this one is no exception. Dogs always have lessons to teach if only humans would learn them.)

What to make of OK, Mr. Field? The story is in some respects difficult to understand. The meaning of a surreal story told by Hannah’s visitor at the end of the novel escaped me (it involves a confusion of identity that can be interpreted in multiple ways), and whether the reader should take other parts of the story literally is not always clear. That makes OK, Mr. Field a challenging book, but like most challenges, this one is not without rewards.

While the story is sad, Katharine Kilalea’s evocative prose is rich with detail and atmosphere. Kilalea makes it possible to empathize with Mr. Field, to understand what it must feel like to live without friends and in a state of depression that makes the anticipation of new friendships impossible. Mr. Field’s interior life is presented in great depth, to the near exclusion of other characters, only two of whom (Hannah and a contractor working nearby) play any role at all in the story Kilalea tells.

This is not a novel for readers who are looking for a happy, life-affirming story, although it is not entirely dreary. It isn’t pleasant to read about depression and loneliness, but the novel is too short to become oppressive in its portrait of despair. Yet readers who make it to the novel’s end will find a bit of comfort in the knowledge that a feeling of emptiness can be recast in a positive light, as a body that has space to store new things. That single revelation makes all the bleakness worthwhile.

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