Folly

Folly by Alan Titchmarsh Hodder, HK$114

In Britain, Alan Titchmarsh is best known as a likeable television gardener and a favourite of housewives. Recently, he has produced several romantic comedies. In this context, Folly is a departure: a family saga that flits from Oxford in the 1950s to a pair of star-crossed lovers in the present. Titchmarsh is ambitious: each chapter begins with a quotation from Keats, Updike, Goldsmith or Shakespeare. But there, I am sorry to say, the proximity to fine writing ends. The story feels familiar: a set of bright young things flirt, ponder their future and go their separate ways. At the hub is Eleanor, an impossibly young woman in love with the dreamy Harry, who chooses the intense Richard King, partly by mistake and partly, one suspects, out of politeness. Fifty years later their grandchildren date, sell paintings and discover, in almost literal terms, that everything is relative. Or is it? The plot has enough holes to fill the Albert Hall, and Titchmarsh's dialogue is wooden enough to kill a vampire. 'It's funny how things turn out, isn't it?' 'You could choose a better word than 'funny.'' 'Weird, then.' 'Yes, weird will do.' Folly by name, folly by nature.