On the Waugh path
One of Us Elizabeth Day (Fourth Estate, £18.99)
WHEN Elizabeth Day’s fourth novel, The Party, was published in 2017, it afforded a solid, if predictable, outing for the “imposter infiltrates gilded rich” scenario beloved of British writers since Brideshead Revisited. A genre which reached peak “Must we?” with the film Saltburn.
Critics inevitably noted Day’s homage to Waugh, as well as Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley and Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker prize-winning The Line of Beauty. In fact, the author drew so heavily on the clichés of the genre, readers can practically play Brideshead Bingo. There’s a big country house, a beautiful boy, aristo parents, kooky sister, Oxbridge scenes, homoerotic yearning and acts of betrayal.