Thinks ...
 First edition | |
| Author | David Lodge |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Secker & Warburg |
Publication date | 2001 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardcover, paperback) |
| ISBN | 0-436-44502-6 |
| OCLC | 45337662 |
Thinks ... is a 2001 novel by British author David Lodge.
Plot
 | This article's plot summary may be too long or excessively detailed. (July 2008) |
Right from the start, Ralph Messenger's philandering is painfully obvious to Helen. At one of the first social gatherings she attends, she happens to see Messenger and the wife of the Head of the School of English, Marianne Richmond, kissing passionately in the kitchen. (She does not know that there is not more to it than meets the eye, that they are just playing some sort of secret game.) One weekend quite early during her stay, after they have been in the hot tub outside and with Carrie already in the house, Messenger plants a firm kiss on Helen's lips. From the secret journal he is keeping, we know that Messenger fancies her. Helen does not actually resist the kiss but afterwards she tells him unmistakably that she is not going to have an affair with him because, among other things, she strongly disapproves of adultery. From Helen's journal, we learn that she is sexually aroused by his presence and by just thinking of him. Messenger, who does not know anything about Helen's real feelings, thinks that he has made his pass at her prematurely and by doing so, has spoiled any liaison with her.
Helen tries to focus on her work. The students she has to teach are a small, friendly and ambitious group who meet on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. Her class is to a large extent about their work in progress, mainly novels which they started during the preceding term. When Sandra Pickering, one of the students, belatedly submits some chapters from the novel she is writing, Helen immediately recognises one of the male characters as having been modelled on her late husband Martin. As Helen has based a character in her novel The Eye of the Storm on Martin, she is about to accuse Sandra Pickering of plagiarism when, to her dismay, she finds out that the girl used to work for the BBC some years ago, that she knew Martin and that she had an affair with him. (Sandra writes about intimate details such as what he preferred doing immediately after sex.) Gradually it dawns upon Helen that her husband must have had a succession of young lovers, with everyone except herself knowing everything, or at least suspecting, while she, only mildly promiscuous during her student days, was never unfaithful to him. At this point Helen decides never again to shed a tear for him and get on with her life. In this new light, not even Messenger's advances seem so monstrous any more.
She makes another discovery which almost turns her view of the world upside down. On a free afternoon, she escapes the stifling atmosphere of the campus to explore the surrounding countryside. Seated over lunch in a pub in the small town of Ledbury, an embarrassing encounter at the pub follows, with all three of them keeping up appearances and being polite and reserved. Later, however, during a duck race (a fund-raising event with plastic ducks "racing" down a small river), Carrie confides in Helen: She knows all (or almost everything) about her husband's flings and, by taking a lover herself, tries to get back at him. Ralph Messenger, she is quite sure, does not know anything about her affair. Also, Carrie tells her that she screwed around a lot while she was studying at UC Berkeley but only with faculty, never with other students.
Back home in the US, Mr Thurlow, Carrie's rich father, has two serious heart attacks in a row so that Carrie books the first flight home. She takes Hope with her. With Carrie out of the way for some time – in the end it turns out to be three weeks – Helen, who has recently let herself be seduced by Messenger, spends the most beautiful and romantic – or rather lustful – three weeks since her husband's death. In the language of the kind of novels she loves reading, she describes herself as having become "a woman of pleasure, a scarlet woman, a woman of easy virtue". She and Messenger have sex practically every day and at all kinds of places. Helen, who prefers a bedroom with the curtains drawn, is amazed at, and eventually fascinated by, Messenger's lust and ingenuity when it comes to selecting odd spots for making love, for instance a prehistoric burial mound on top of a hill, with some hikers approaching. Helen also volunteers to perform the duties of a housewife for Carrie and then stays over at the Messengers' house. At night, she and Ralph Messenger derive some additional pleasure from trying not to make any sound during their lovemaking so as not to arouse the kids' suspicion. (Emily, who has an 18-year-old boyfriend and who discusses her sex life with her mother, seems to know what is going on anyway and at one point almost blackmails her stepfather.) Soon Helen ponders the question whether she is actually falling in love with him, if and how their affair will continue after the end of the term. Only once, when they are in bed together, can he not get an erection.
A final breach of confidence committed by Ralph Messenger makes it much easier for Helen to leave him and go back to London. Also, for the first time, it inadvertently triggers some emotion in Messenger, albeit jealousy. When he is waiting for Helen in her maisonette, he cannot resist the temptation to turn on her laptop and read parts of her journal. This is how he learns about his wife's infidelity. When Helen enters her apartment, his jealousy gets the better of him so that he cannot hide the fact that he has invaded her privacy. (Originally, he suggested that they should exchange their respective journals, as each of them would profit from reading the other's but Helen refused.)
Ralph Messenger does have to be operated on after all, but the surgery is successful. He somewhat ages and loses his reputation as a woman-chaser. In 1999, he publishes a new book entitled Machine Living and in due course is awarded a CBE. He never confronts Carrie with her affair and remains married to her. Helen Reed returns to London and resumes writing. Some time later she meets a new partner but she does not move in with him (or he with her). In the following year she publishes Crying is a Puzzler, a novel about life on campus quite similar to that of the University of Gloucester.
Publication details
- Secker & Warburg, 2001, ISBN 0-436-44502-6
- Penguin Books, 2002, ISBN 0-14-200086-8 (United States).
- Penguin Books Ltd, 2005, ISBN 0-14-100021-X (United Kingdom).
External links
- Review of Thinks... in The Guardian
- Review of Thinks... and Nice Work
- 'Let Your Mind Wander', review of Thinks... in the Oxonian Review