Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Care of Wooden Floors: A Novel
    Care of Wooden Floors: A Novel
    Care of Wooden Floors: A Novel
    Audiobook8 hours

    Care of Wooden Floors: A Novel

    Written by Will Wiles

    Narrated by Michael Page

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A witty debut novel about a house-sitting gig gone terribly, hilariously wrong.

    A British copywriter stays for a week at his composer friend Oskar's elegant, ultramodern apartment in a glum Eastern European city. The instructions are simple: feed the cats, don't touch the piano, and make sure nothing harms the priceless wooden floors. Content for the first time in ages, he accidentally spills some wine. Over the course of a week, both the apartment and the narrator's sanity fall apart in this original and "weirdly addictive" (Daily Mail) novel.

    As the situation in and out of the sleek apartment spirals out of control, more of Oskar's notes appear, taking on an insistent—even sinister—tone. Care of Wooden Floors is a must-read for anyone who's ever bungled a house-sitting gig, or felt inferior to a perfectionist friend—that is to say, all of us.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateOct 9, 2012
    ISBN9781469207551
    Care of Wooden Floors: A Novel
    Author

    Will Wiles

    Will Wiles is the author of the novel Care of Wooden Floors and is an architecture and design journalist in Great Britain. His writing has appeared in Cabinet magazine, New Statesman, and other UK publications. He lives in London.

    Related to Care of Wooden Floors

    Related audiobooks

    Humor & Satire For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Books

      Oct 16, 2023

      What a thing of joy is a new Francis Spufford novel. Golden Hill, his debut, was a transporting piece of historical fiction that captured life in early New York in all its quirk and contingence, and deservedly won a bag of awards. His second, Light P

      3 min read

    • Article

      Ten Must-Read Crime Books Set in the American West

      Dec 27, 2019

      This list of must-read crime titles forms part of a lesser-known West, an awesomely weird landscape in which the line between Good and Evil shimmers like a mirage. The post Ten Must-Read Crime Books Set in the American West appeared first on The Mill

      4 min read

    • Article

      LUCY LETHBRIDGE on Sylvia Townsend Warner's 1920s novel Lolly Willowes

      Nov 16, 2022

      Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes is a tale of witchery, devilment and transformation. What starts as a beady, satirical comedy of manners about a poor and eccentric middle-aged spinster dependent on her relations takes a sudden turn into chaos

      3 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Shipstead, Ryan, Walker, and More

      May 17, 2022

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Maggie Shipstead, Eimer Ryan, Sarai Walker, and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to help The Millio

      5 min read

    • Article

      Five Books We Missed in 2015

      Dec 15, 2015

      Five Books We Missed in 2015
      9 min read

    • Article

      In Memoriam: Anthony “One-Take Tony” Hollander

      Feb 28, 2019

      The audiobook community mourns the passing of one of its giants, a talent who famously earned a rare NC-17 rating for his recording of ‘The Portrait of a Lady.’ The post In Memoriam: Anthony “One-Take Tony” Hollander appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Fourteen First and Last Sentence Novels

      Apr 22, 2022

      I think of this as a new literary form, a type of novelistic prose poem, a hybrid, a chimera, whose main currency is delight, wonder, and mystery. The post Fourteen First and Last Sentence Novels appeared first on The Millions.

      13 min read

    • Article

      Interlude

      Mar 28, 2022

      Interlude
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Lighter Side of Dan Chaon

      Apr 11, 2022

      I had a dystopian idea in the beginning, and in the end the dystopia caught up with me. The post The Lighter Side of Dan Chaon appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Bookseller’s Elegy

      Jul 19, 2017

      What can you do when a customer wants a book that you not only find objectionable but also believe actually dangerous in the lessons it portends amidst such a politically precarious time? The post A Bookseller’s Elegy appeared first on The Millions.

      6 min read

    • Article

      The Great Divide

      Apr 22, 2022

      It’s easy to imagine a conversation about Louise Kennedy’s debut novel, Trespasses, that goes something like this: “What’s it about?” “Well, it’s about a young Catholic woman in Belfast in the 70s, at the height of the Troubles.” “Punishment beatings

      2 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: R.O. Kwon

      Dec 15, 2017

      The other night, at a party, someone asked if I consider my writing to be political. I said no, but also yes, always, what else can it be, since I’m an immigrant, a woman, and a person of color, living in a time and place in which more or less every

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Reader

      May 1, 2020

      The Reader
      5 min read

    • Article

      High Rise

      Aug 6, 2021

      High Rise
      24 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Jeff VanderMeer

      Dec 5, 2017

      As an omnivore, I define the word “enjoyment” as anything from a heady intellectual excitement at exposure to new ideas or narrative structures all the way to an uneasy/comfortable feeling that lives visceral in the gut and defies analysis. I’m not r

      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Care of Wooden Floors

    3.5/5

    106 ratings17 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 1/5
      Oskar, a composer and control freak, asks one of his oldest friends to live in and look after his apartment, while he’s in California to get divorced. The friend, the narrator of this novel, agrees immediately, because he sees a great chance to work on his writings. When the narrator arrives at the apartment in an East European capital, this new space of living welcomes him very coldly and intimidatory. Oskar left notes with instructions everywhere – he imagined every step his friend could make and every accident that could happen. But as the narrator is settling down, we can already foresee that nothing will escape unharmed…I am very open to sarcasm, irony and any kind of dark humour, but I somehow couldn’t find many of these elements in this book – it’s just not “sensitive” enough. What Will Wiles uses is more tomfoolery and a “sledgehammer humour” which seems quite crude. I also would have liked a little hint to what finally happened in the case of Oskar’s cleaning lady.
    • 1/5
      For transparency's sake: I read the first 1/4 of the book.When I read a review of this book, the impression given by the reviewer was that this was an observational comedy about a man who house sits for a fussy college friend. Through a series of farcical mistakes, he manages to do pretty much the exact opposite of all the things asked of him by the apartment's owner.In actuality, this is a book about an unlikable (and unrelatable) main character who was so blah that the book never really hooked my interest. While the little notes peppered about the apartment by Oskar (the owner) were funny because they were so over the top these were not enough to save the book overall. If your character is as dull as dirt then you'd better draw the reader in with an exceptional storyline or else you lose the reader which this book absolutely did.
    • 3/5
      Started well but withered away as it was essentially one joke, which wore thin long before the end.
    • 3/5
      As I read this book my opinion changed so many times it was distracting. The premise - housesitting for a compulsive neat freak, intrigued me. I am one who is never comfortable staying in other people's homes as I am always fearful of doing damage. In this book the main character is asked, by an old college friend, to house and cat sit his meticulously renovated apt. while he is away. What ensues is somewhat predictable, often annoyingly so, a bit funny, and then; ridiculous. The plot of the novel began to aggravate me quite a bit, and then, just as I was ready to send it back to the library, the author would throw in some especially deep, insightful, thought provoking passages, and I was drawn back into the pages.
      I wish the author had shown some restraint with the apt. sitting fiascos and focused more on his perceptive writing, but in this case I will take the bad with the very good.
    • 4/5
      I'm always impressed when I stumble upon a book that seems to have such a sparse plot that it can't possibly meet the requirements of a full novel and then proves me wrong. This story doesn't just spiral out of control; it faithfully logs each mistep. And you are so willing to pitch in and suspend any disbelief with a spade and fresh soil that you forget the thread that brought you there (oh, that's right--we were planting something). Painful and funny and tense. If he'd only used the coaster, like Oskar had said. Out, damn'd spot!
    • 4/5
      Oskar, a composer who is also an obsessive/compulsive cleanliness nut, has asked the narrator to house sit for him while he is out of the country. Oskar leaves detailed instructions--please do not play with the piano; do not let the cats go on the sofa or into the music room etc. The most important instruction was in regard to the floors. They were a rare and expensive French oak, and Oskar warned that any spills must be wiped up at once.Unfortunately, the narrator gets drunk the first night and spills wine on the floors, which he only discovers the next morning, by which time they have left an impressive stain. Things go downhill from there, until the house is nearly destroyed, the cats are missing (or worse) and the narrator has been driven nearly insane.This is one of those quirky little European novels I've come to enjoy so much.
    • 4/5
      I was laughing out loud during the last quarter of this book; it was a fun read, and there was the bonus of it being well written too. The stylish writing saved the mid third from being mired by a bit of boggy floundering; the debauched night on the town may have been mostly irrelevant but it provided funny descriptions of a hangover. ("I may have groaned. My body was made from wads of soggy material inexpertly lashed together with stringy sinews. The wads composed of the worst stuff possible – bad milk, wine turned to vinegar, chewed gum, earwax, the black crud that accrues on the bottom of computer mice. The connecting sinews all strained and ached. It was a bad scene.")
      I loved his observations, ("On the landing...was a woman, hair tied back in the ubiquitous headscarf, her age an irrelevant point somewhere between forty-five and seventy. A life of poor diet and hard work had turned her into a huge callus, and her nose was pushed up in a way that inescapably reminded me of the squashed face of a bat.") and his interior monologue . His care of his friend's flat with the gorgeous wooden floors is marred by the cumulative effects of foreseeable and preventable incidents, yet his continued rationalisation of his actions is helplessly human, and although not quite endearing they are oddly understandable. The cats in the flat understood him too: "It was slightly galling that the cat tired of the game before I did. ... The fifteenth or sixteenth time I threw the cork, my playmate simply did not move. It studied the projectile with geological indifference and turned away, tail aloft like a raised middle finger."
    • 3/5
      Diese und weitere Rezensionen findet ihr auf meinem Blog Anima Libri - Buchseele

      Uff… Also irgendwie war das jetzt so gar nicht das, was ich erwartet habe :/ Ich hatte mir von Will Wiles „Die nachhaltige Pflege von Holzböden“ definitiv etwas anderes erhofft. Ich fand den Roman zwar nicht schlecht, aber so wirklich viel damit anfangen konnte ich auch nicht.

      Denn so witzig und unterhaltsam dieser Debütroman stellenweise auch ist, größtenteils ist er doch eher bizarr. Eigentlich fand ich das Buch sogar ziemlich unterhaltsam bis zu einem gewissen Punkt, den ich hier nicht näher nennen will, um niemandem den Spaß zu nehmen, aber ab diesem Punkt wurde mir der Protagonist leider echt unsympathisch und die Handlung zu konfus.

      Dabei fängt es wie gesagt vielversprechend an, damit, dass der Protagonist in eine nicht näher benannte osteuropäische Hauptstadt reist, um dort die Wohnung seines ehemaligen Studienkumpanens Oskar zu hüten. Denn Oskar ist in Kalifornien, um sich dort von seiner Frau scheiden zu lassen.

      Da Oskar aber nun einmal ein absoluter Perfektionist und Ordnungsfanatiker ist, jemand, für den immer alles in geregelten Bahnen und nach festgesetzten Regeln ablaufen muss, hinterlässt er seinem Freund überall Anmerkungen dazu, wie mit seiner Wohnung umzugehen ist – vor allem natürlich mit den Katzen und dem Holzboden.

      Das ganze ist schräg und skurril, aber auf eine humorvolle, unterhaltsame Art und Weise, denn natürlich geht die ganze Sache quasi sofort schief und prompt ist auf Oskars geliebtem Boden ein Rotweinfleck – das Cover zu Will Wiles Roman ist also ausnahmsweise mal eins, das wirklich, wirklich gut zur Handlung passt!

      Aber wie gesagt, ab einem gewissen Punkt wurde es mir einfach so bizarr. Denn der Protagonist ist sowieso nicht der sympathischste, eigentlich ist er sogar ziemlich nervig, schüttet die ganze Zeit nur Rotwein in sich hinein und ist sowieso nicht unbedingt der interessanteste. Da ist Oskar definitiv der interessantere Part, nur leider hilft das irgendwann auch nicht mehr, denn beide Figuren zeigen nach und nach Seiten, die ich wirklich nicht so recht nachvollziehen konnte.

      Daher ist „Die nachhaltige Pflege von Holzböden“ von Will Wiles insgesamt nicht besonders überzeugend gewesen, da es trotz starkem Anfang irgendwann leider sehr deutlich nachlässt und das Ende ziemlich, nun ja, seltsam und für mich nicht mehr nachvollziehbar war.
    • 3/5
      My husband picked this out for himself and I stole it after forgetting my book on a trip. Closer to the "light read" that "literary" side of the scale ("light literary?" Is that a genre?), it was enjoyable, if a bit drawn out in spots.
    • 4/5
      ”My old friend,Again, thank you for your help in what is sadly such a difficult time for me. The flat is not large and what I need from you not great, it is mainly a business of knowing that there is a trusted soul in situ and that I need fear no break-ins or fire. I sincerely hope you are aware, I would gladly repay the favour for you at any time.”Published in 2012, this rather dark, ‘comedy of errors’ story has a lot going for it, generating the same level of stunned fascination as watching a slow motion, unavoidable train wreck can produce in its audience. The story has multiple layers to it that complicate the delivery of what at the start comes across as the perfect ‘fraternity boy never grows up’ kind of story. The premise starts off as a simple one: A rather OCD musician/composer, Oskar asks his more laid back less compulsive former university days friend to leave London for a couple of weeks and come house sit his immaculate, ultra-modern Eastern European apartment for him and take care of his two cats, Shossy and Stavvy, while Oskar travels to LA to deal with his divorce from his Californian wife, Laura. Of course our narrator is keen, who wouldn't be at the prospect of a partially paid for vacation (no accommodation to pay for!). He is also hopeful that this will be the perfect opportunity for him to try and write his breakout novel that will remove him from his dreary day to day copywriter employment of writing garbage bulletins for the council. Oskar has peace of mind that his apartment is in good hands and our nameless narrator has an opportunity to put uninterrupted effort into his writing.... so, a win-win situation, right? Need I remind you that this is a dark comedy? The story, spanning a whole 8 days in duration, is a view of those days from our narrator’s perspective: the run down, derelict aspects of the unidentified former Soviet bloc European city in contrast to Oskar’s pristine apartment; the chaos of the external world colliding with the internal chaos (and struggle for control) of our protagonist and shifting memories that augment the contrasting personalities of the friends. The bumbling, snowballing chain of events (that slow moving, unavoidable train wreck I referred to earlier in the review) has its farcical qualities, but I have to admit that there was a point in the story where any concern I may had for our 'poor' narrator went out the window and never came back. I resorted to enjoying this one strictly for the well written dark comedy that it is. Loved all of Oskar's notes.... that was a nice touch to the story!Overall, a well written dark comedy - really, there is a reason I keep on stressing the dark comedy aspect of this one - that is worth reading for the writing and the tale of just how badly wrong a simple job of house-sitting can go. Possible lesson about drinking red wine, too, while we are at it.
    • 3/5
      I like absurdist comedy so long as it isn’t too self-aware or too absurd. This book just walked the line. Occasionally it veered into trying too hard with acutely contrived phrases and drifting plot elements, but for the most part it was an amusing tale with a worsening series of events that tracks logically and inevitably to its conclusion. The way our unnamed narrator gets out of the whole thing is the lowest point and shows the least imagination which surprised me since Wiles managed to make house-sitting interesting. He also made a relatively boring guy interesting with his insights into Oskar’s character and his observations of his surroundings. The two mirrored each other pretty well in most every way. Oskar is named, but never seen or known. The flat-sitter is well seen and known, but never named. Where Oskar has tried to order every last detail of his life, flat-sitter has drifted on a tide of least effort. Flat-sitter has no idea what he might be capable of or eventually do, but by the evidence of his many notes, Oskar knows. Flat-sitter’s home city is known, named and described, Oskar’s is not. Overall it was enjoyable to read and I’m inclined to read Wiles’s next book, too.
    • 4/5
      "PLEASE, YOU MUST TAKE CAREOF THE WOODEN FLOORS. They are French oak and cost me a great deal when I replaced the old floor, and they must be treated like the finest piece of furniture in the flat, apart from the piano of course."How on earth do I review this book? I have no idea. I'll start writing and see what happens. Okay, so what I expected this book to be about was a guy, staying in his friend's flat, who descends into a Lucky Jim-esque spiral of chaos when he damages the wooden floors. Trying to put it right, getting into deeper and deeper mess, the whole thing turning into a farcical comedy, etc etc. And on some level, that is EXACTLY what the book delivered.Our nameless protagonist is indeed staying in his anal-retentive musical-genius friend Oskar's European apartment. This apartment is perfect. Oskar's whole life has been about perfect. The floors are expensive and perfect, the bookshelves are dust-free and perfect, his kitchen is shiny and perfect. Clearly Oskar likes to be in control - a fact that his housesitting friend finds demonstrated all too clearly when he starts discovering notes all over the house about the exact way to do everything and the importance of keeping the flat and its contents in pristine condition. Unfortunately, this friend is not terribly responsible and gets drunk a lot. It starts with a small ring of wine on the floor from the bottom of a glass... Where it ends, I won't say, but suffice to say that mayhem, accidents and escalating calamity are the order of the day.And yet... this really isn't just a Wodehouse-esque humorous novel about a bumbling fool getting more and more out of his depth. That element of it veered for me between being very darkly, infectiously funny, and being a bit much. If that had been the only draw, this book might have had a much lower rating than I've given it. What made this book for me, offsetting the more ridiculous comedic moments, was the beautiful writing. It took a while to settle into it, and at the beginning I was actually quite frustrated by the over-description and slightly purple prose; one particular large paragraph about a pallet of tins of cat food almost tipped me over the edge into 'right, me and this book aren't going to get on', and I was on the verge of taking it back to the library unfinished.Happily for me, I kept going, and in the end I grew to rather like the odd mixture of black humour, flights of description, philosophical musing, poetic little word plays and straightforward thought. This rather jumbled effect might not appeal to everybody, but once I'd settled into it I was really glad I'd persevered! I loved the little moments of crystal-clear observation, ringing with the kind of truth that makes for a great author or a brilliant comedian. As for the story itself... well, the themes were about as jumbled as the prose, to be honest. It was about order and entropy, friendship and responsibility, the clues someone's home can offer about their life and world view, the little moments that we can never take back, the experience of being away from home in a country with a completely different history... and yes, I even learned a tiny bit about treating damaged wooden floors. It's not a book I'd read again, but I'm glad I took a chance on it because it was very different to what I expected and I enjoyed the ride!
    • 4/5
      Funny Anything which could go wrong does. All is revealed in the end. Perfection vs life as we know it
    • 4/5
      A very enjoyable, funny book. Deliciously tight style of writing with an interesting look at the relationship between the two main characters, Oskar the absent perfectionist flat owner and his accident prone flat-sitter friend. The cleaning lady is also a star!
    • 3/5
      You may treat this book as a comedy you go and watch in the movie theater to relax and laugh. It’s light but it’s not all fluff, and as in all good comedies there are things there to learn about human nature. It’s about a young guy who is asked to house sit, or more accurately flat sit (the guy is English) for a friend who lives in some unnamed East European country. The friend has extremely high cleanliness and order standards bordering perfection in fact, and our narrator is finding it rather difficult to abide by them. All sorts of funny situations ensue, many exacerbated by the fact that the narrator does not speak the language of the people of the country he has found himself in. It seems that he fails spectacularly at the task. The book is funny and you laugh, but there are some scenes that are really overwrought and consequently too much of a farce for me. They go on for pages on end to the point that I found myself cringing and skipping big chunks of them. It’s not what I usually read- I just realized I don’t even have a shelf titled humour or comedy- but it’s the first book of 2013 and it’s not bad to enter the new year with a smile after all.
    • 4/5
      Novels don’t always have to be about big important subjects like war or star-crossed romances. In the case of Care of Wooden Floors, the subject is very small and personal: taking care of a friend’s apartment when he is away. That’s it … nothing more. Our narrator (a barely making it British copywriter) arrives at an unnamed Eastern European city to take care of his composer friend Oskar’s flat. The only instructions: Feed the cats, don’t touch the piano and make sure nothing damages the wooden floors.From this simple premise, debut novelist Will Wiles builds a steadily escalating tale of calamity and mishap wrapped in a delicious layer of black humor. Like all good slapstick, Care of Wooden Floors starts small and slowly builds—lurching from one small problem to another until everything snowballs out of control. Yet aside from the rather hasty and unsatisfying ending, the story never feels outlandish or unbelievable. Each event seems inevitable (almost preordained), and while you feel the narrator’s panic and pain as things escalate, you’re can’t help but laugh. (However, if you are a cat lover, you might not appreciate some of the narrator’s more blackly comic misadventures.)From the prophetic and oddly specific notes left by Oskar to the steady disintegration of our narrator’s piece of mind (as well as the apartment), this book was a delight from start to finish. I immensely enjoyed it and will definitely seek out future books by this author. If you’re looking for an offbeat book that is best described as “literary slapstick,” this would be the perfect choice.
    • 2/5
      Theater of the absurd in a first person narrative.....did not enjoy this at any level.