Book Review: "Entertaining Strangers" by Jonathan Taylor

Through some dark, Satanic streets, down a flooded alleyway, past a half-lit business of an unspecified nature called Club Class, along the towpath of a disused canal, over an abandoned shopping trolley—until we reached The Dying Swan, a pub locked in beery twilight.

- "Entertaining Strangers" by Jonathan Taylor

It is the middle of February 2025 and I'm still on sick leave from work for some quite bad mental health problems. Recently, I have been trying to go outside more and since then, I have been using the bus to get to the library in Nottingham - a place where I do not share the happiness of the atmosphere with. However, I seem to have created a safe space for myself in the library where I have borrowed a ton of books, including the tragicomedy Entertaining Strangers by Jonathan Taylor. A novel that reminds me half of Withnail and I and half reminds me of Brideshead Revisited if they were both written and performed by Bret Easton Ellis featuring Truman Capote's humour. So strap in, grab some vermouth and switch on the theme tune to the opera Carmen. Let's take a look at the book...

Jules' introduction to Edwin’s chaotic world is as abrupt for the reader as it is for her. She is sitting for a moment on a grimy doorstep in an equally grimy town when the door behind her suddenly opens, catapulting her, and us, into an environment that feels disordered and anarchic. Edwin, our guide into this world, greets her while donning a pom-pom-trimmed dressing gown belonging to his landlady, rambling about ants, and offering vermouth. This bizarre initiation prepares us for the novel’s blend of surreal humour and weird character study. I have to say I loved the opening to this book. It was so crazy and feels like a picture frame left askew whilst everyone within is trying to cling on for dear life.

Despite the novel’s offbeat humor and absurd situations, Taylor demonstrates a keen ability to draw readers into the lives of his characters, making us genuinely care about them. Even Edwin’s colony of ants, which he meticulously tends to, becomes an object of our concern. One particularly striking moment of emotional depth comes when Edwin receives a letter from his mother. At first, he dismissively crumples it and tosses it into the ant farm. But later that night, Jules, unable to sleep, notices Edwin making repeated trips outside. Investigating further, she sees that the letter, once carelessly discarded, has been moved and refolded, suggesting Edwin’s suppressed turmoil. These quiet, introspective moments balance the novel’s broader, more chaotic atmosphere. The balancing act of these subgenres being worked against each other is something that Jonathan Taylor does so well. It had me absolutely hooked to see that there was so much layering going on.

This balance between humour and melancholy is a defining strength of Entertaining Strangers. The absurdity of Edwin’s job (working for Encyclodial, a premium-rate phone service where callers request information that is then read to them from a physical encyclopedia) feels almost plausible until we remember that the novel is set in 1997, just before the internet would render such a job obsolete. His later endeavor, writing A Cultural Encyclopedia of Ants, is equally ludicrous yet oddly endearing. We therefore cultivate this love and care for Edwin that perhaps, when we are first introduced to him, we find to be more strange than true. But as the story moves to this point, we can call him a friend. Even if his job does becomes obselete and thus, we know he is doomed - we still think he is a fantastic character with much scope to do more.

All in all, I found this book to be well-written and immersive with characters (such as Edwin) who I thought were fantastic, compelling and raw with emotion and contradiction. Themes of feigned opulence flicker against the backdrop of the mundane quality of real life and desires flutter by as reality stops them in their track. The dream life wanted that is represented by the personality is not the same as who they have to be in order to get by and Jonathan Taylor hits that nail right on the damn head.