I’ll Be Waiting in Abeyance

I read this book ages ago (really ages ago) and I then thought it very special. Thing is, I have been trying to get hold of it ever since, but to no avail. I obviously do not remember the name of neither book nor author, as it then would not have been a problem finding it. I hardly even know the story anymore, as it goes. Anyway, in writing this entry I was hoping someone might be able to recognise the little I know of the book, and so help me find it ...

I think the story of the book starts of somewhere in Western Europe, to end up on this Greek island. A young man befriends an older man, and is invited to come to Greece with him to stay at the latter’s villa. The whole story evolves around the older man playing pranks on the younger man. Not just little pranks, but seriously orchestrated pranks; where he creates settings to suddenly, repeatedly and viciously crush them. It all ends up with the younger man becoming more and more paranoid, as he never knows whom to trust. There are other people involved in the pranks too, and they often make the younger man think they are on his side to later deceive him. The story’s current setting is always so believable, and often desirable as well for that matter, that the younger man always falls for it, There seems no way he can resist, as every new setting seems like a solution to solve each predicament he finds himself in. The thing is I remember myself as a reader being fooled throughout the book in the same way as the young man; thinking at every new setting: this is real, now everything is ok.

I have a slight memory of the book having been filmatised, and then with either David Niven or Alec Guiness as the older man. I have not, even through vigorous research, managed to find the book through these two actors though

I also seem to remember there was this other book by the same author, a book consisting of two parts. The first part describing the love and worship this certain man has for a young woman living across the road from him; a real love story. Now, the second part of the book presents a very different setting as it is told from the young woman’s point of view, where she lives in total fear of this same man and his obsession with her. As in the first book I mentioned, also here a trick is paid on the reader as one finds oneself taking someone’s part, to then be disillusioned.

In both books obsession, trust/mistrust and paranoia are central.

Now then! Anyone recognise either of those books? I’ll be waiting and hoping ...