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The Fractured Smile, by Kathleen Sully (1965)

Cover of The Fractured Smile by Kathleen Sully

The Fractured Smile is a Feydeau comedy of infidelity, coincidences and missed connections transported to sixties England and a universe where Brownian motion has replaced Newtonian mechanics. Jess wakes to a phone call saying that her husband, George, has been spotting boarding a train to the seaside with his very attractive secretary. Jess throws on a dress, digs George’s revolver out of the attic, and dashes out of the house still wearing her bright red fuzzy slippers, with son David in tow, to give chase.

From this point on, the chain reactions take off, carried along by their own momentum. Except that Sully’s chain reactions have a unique characteristic. While each propels the story along, it also causes her characters — and the reader — to adapt to a shift in perspective. Piling into the first train compartment with any space, full of adrenaline and jealous rage, Jess gradually realizes that her compartment mates are not aloof and anonymous but a group of little people, elderly, alert, and considerate: “She looked around at their faces — they were pocket-sized angels in moth-balled reach-me-downs.”

Once at the coast, Jess quickly discovers how difficult it is to track down an unfaithful husband in a resort town full of hotels when his name really is Mr. Smith. Jess becomes separated from David and the gun. David meets up with a fearless local seven year-old named Rodge and the two of them meet up with a tenacious little dog they name Stray. Both Jess and George’s parents learn of her homicidally-minded flight to the coast and decide to team up and head off in pursuit.

Characters rush in and out of places with the manic energy of a farce on fast-forward. The two sets of in-laws, at distant ends of the financial and cultural spectrum, find they have far more in common than suspected. George eventually shifts from skulking husband to ally in the hunt for the lost boys. But in Sully’s physics, nothing that’s been upended can’t be upended again. Another accident, an angry word, and soon the in-laws are at battle again: “She could hear their querulous voices, her mother’s dominating all, as they quarrelled, heavily and bitterly, bringing up old wounds from the past, personal slights, imagined insults, broken promises — anything, anything at all so long as it could be hurled spitefully at the other.”

And as seems to be a rule in Sully’s universe, death is never too far off stage. Emotions tumble one after another like the balls in a bingo spinner, so love and loyalty and giddy delight can be followed a page or two later by fear, bitterness, and dread. As one might expect in a universe ruled by a healthy dose of randomness, some reactions shoot characters off into quite unexpected directions and some simply ricochet them right back where they came from. One thing’s for sure, though: when you start The Fractured Smile, you won’t be able to predict how things will turn out.


The Fractured Smile, by Kathleen Sully
London: Peter Davies, 1965

1 thought on “The Fractured Smile, by Kathleen Sully (1965)”

  1. Thank you for your interesting articles.

    The Fractured Smile sounds like a madly interesting read. I hope I manage to obtain a copy to read one day

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