The Landlady's Niece

Marcia Sweet is head of the Information/Reference Unit, Douglas Library,
Queen’s University.

This is a very uneven book, by which I mean that it has moments when the
observations are extraordinarily insightful and the expression
particularly deft, and moments when one is bored silly by details of
make-up, dress, manner, and events that don’t further the story.
Phillips has given himself more imaginative possibilities than he is
able to exploit—a promising plot, intriguing subplots, and potentially
interesting characters.

The plot hinges on the problems of Elinor, a bright, sophisticated,
witty, middle-aged Torontonian who inherits a run-down apartment house
in Montreal. Phillips does a reasonably good job of building the women
characters, but the men are unanimously described in a shallow,
stereotypical way: they wise-crack, toss off one-liners at a furious
pace, and are far too clever.

Phillips is uncomfortable with anything but the superficial in this
book. Elinor’s revelation of a pivotal love affair is truncated, so
that its importance to the story is lost. And whereas in Sunday’s
Child, Phillips did a superb job of placing the story in a recognizable
Montreal neighborhood, there is no sense of place in this tale.

Most disappointing is the collapse of Elinor’s personality at the end
of the story. Up until that point, she has been characterized as a
positive, capable, sexy person, more or less enjoying life and the
challenges it bring. Thus, it is totally out of character for her to
gratefully and belatedly assume the role of the sensible, dependent, and
indecisive bride of a man (her ex-husband) who is presentable and rich,
but only so-so in bed.

Despite its great promise, The Landlady’s Niece is not the
wonderfully comic story it might have been. It’s as if Phillips had
been distracted from his writing by more interesting people and events
than these.