You won't remember Mr. Heming. He was the estate agent who showed you around your comfortable home, suggested a financial package, negotiated a price with the owner, and called you with the good news. The less good news is that, all these years later, he still has the key. That's absurd, you laugh. Of all the many hundreds of houses he has sold, why would he still have the key to mine? The answer is; he has the keys to them all.
William Heming's most at home in a stranger's private things. He makes it his business to know all their secrets, and how they arrange their lives. His every pleasure is in his leafy community. He loves and knows every inch of it, feels nurtured by it, and would defend it - perhaps not with his life but if it came to it, with yours. Things begin to change when Mr. Hemings' obsession shifts from many people to one, and then a dead body winds up in someone's garden. For a man who is used to going unremarked, Mr. Heming's finds his natural routine becomes uncomfortably interrupted.
The best way I can describe A Pleasure and a Calling is unsettling. Phil Hogan does a good job at not only creating a ... what can only be described as voyeuristic main character in Mr. Heming, but also giving reasons and backstory for why he is the way that he is and how he came to be a real estate agent. It's such a clever idea to make him be a real estate agent. Who else besides you and a select number of people such as family and friends would at one point have access to your home? A real estate agent. From the beginning, the story and character of Mr. Heming is unhinged, but it only increases as the plot weaves on and we both a) find out more about his backstory, and b) find out what he is truly capable of doing.
While there are a few boring moments in the narrative, Phil Hogan does an excellent job at making this a creepy and unnerving story that demands your full and uninterrupted attention until the very end. The narration style is so slick and so smooth. It almost sounds as if he's speaking to a trusted confidante or giving a confessional interview. I could believe either scenario. This man is a high-functioning sociopath who is good at what he's doing, so it makes sense that his narration style would be in this way. It's supposed to be skewed in his favour and completely narcissistic as it is. Hogan does a very good job at creating this sociopathic character that you can't help but feel sympathy for in a few scenes.
A sign that Phil Hogan has done his job right is that you feel uncomfortable reading about Mr. Heming's escapades, but you also feel uncomfortable with yourself for feeling something for him in certain scenes. There is a great amount of sarcastic and self-referential humour in here that fits the narrative well and makes Heming slightly less aloof than he is when he is being serious. It adds an extra dimension to the novel as a whole. It also taps into his ever-growing descent into complete madness and chaos.
This book reminds you why you should change your locks upon buying and moving into a new home. A Pleasure and a Calling is creepy, unhinged, and surprisingly insightful. It's funny and has a great main character and narrator in Heming, who demands that the reader pay attention to the story from beginning to end. While it was mostly an enjoyable, atmospheric, and unsettling read, there were a few parts that were dull and dragged the tension down slightly. Besides that, I enjoyed this book immensely and am going to give it a 4/5.
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