I Saw a Man by Owen Sheers review – a compelling view of male bereavement

A recently widowed writer strikes up a friendship with his wealthy neighbour, in a novel filled with complicity, secrecy and guilt

Owen Sheers’ fourth novel is a journey into male bereavement, grief and guilt. Michael Turner is a young and ambitious writer, embarking on a biography of an eminent neurosurgeon who is trying to locate the part of the brain responsible for empathy. Much as this might signal the novel’s preoccupation with masculine sensibilities, it is not as clumsy as it sounds. Michael is struggling to cope with the death of his wife, Caroline, killed in a drone strike while making a documentary about Pakistani jihadists; at the same time, he has become friendly with his new neighbours, wealthy Josh Nelson, a Lehman Brothers banker, and his perfect family. Michael is “adept at fitting into the lives of others”, and the Nelsons are soon doting on him, showing him off at parties, allowing him to babysit their bright young daughters.

The novel opens with Michael’s discovery that the Nelson house is apparently empty and unlocked. As he ventures, puzzled, deeper into the house, haunted by half-glimpses of his own past and his wife’s spectral presence, much of the story leading up to this point unfolds. It is a moment of tension sustained for more than half the book. When the tension breaks, it does so in a cruel and brutal way, twisting a knife in the wound of Michael’s grief, and throwing him together with Josh in a curious relationship of complicity, secrecy and guilt. Both men are anxious that their secrets should not become known, while the reader is left wondering who will find out what.

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