Waiting for Ted by Marieke Bigg

Completely unintentionally, it’s been a few years since I last read a book published by Dead Ink.

As one of the longer standing millennial-y British indie presses, I have encountered and enjoyed many of their books, and this is yet another example of an enjoyable and engaging read from their book stable. Not, alas, quite up there with Sealed by Naomi Booth, which continues to be one of my absolute reading highlights of the past decade or so, but still good, still good, still good…

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Sealed by Naomi Booth is great and I think that I’ve reiterated that many times, but it always bears repeating. Definitely worth checking out Dead Ink for Sealed alone… Sealed by Naomi Booth. I recommend it.

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Waiting for Ted is a 2022 novel by Marieke Bigg and although it’s not without a few flaws (structurally more than anything else – there is a very abrupt ending and there are some chronological inconsistencies that feeeeeel accidental rather than intentional, tho as there’s a first person narrator who’s not doing great (#mypeople), perhaps these could be, but but but but but the question of unreliable memorialising isn’t directly there, and perhaps Marieke Bigg is presuming a reader would see that it’s implicit and I’m just being dumb and stupid by presuming that it isn’t???) it absolutely is a fun, engaging and human read…

The narrative covers a single night (plus memories) in the life of Rosalind, a lifestyle and interior design influencer who is waiting – draped naked and over made-up on a chaise longue – for her “lumbering oaf” of a long-term partner (the titular Ted) to return home, ready for a (clearly doomed) attempt to rekindle the spark in a definitely moribund (dying if not already dead) relationship…

Rosalind comes from a very privileged background, while Ted is a more rough ‘n’ ready workin’ class lad dun good type, an estate agent who likes football and the pub and banter and Game of Thrones, while she prefers cooking, styling, photography and building an online brand as a #tradwife type…

Of course, as is so often the case in stories and in reality, the picture perfect #instalife is a thin facade, there is no longer any love or desire between the couple, Ted’s job does not pay for the lifestyle they live, and it is Rosalind’s inheritance that actually maintains the props for the Instagram likes that she lives through…

Her parents also have a terrible marriage, with her father fucking a yoga instructor/influencer old schoolfriend of Rosalind’s with increasing indiscretion, until Roslyn’s mother is provoked into what is seen to them as a scandalous separation…

Lying on her chaise longue, itself a contentious purchase, Rosalind remembers the beginning, the middle and the more recent parts of this relationship with Ted, as well as her friendship with the woman her dad has been “learning yoga” with…

Rosalind’s childhood of blood sports and bigotry is contrasted with Ted’s origins as part of a large family with a labourer father and a mother who works as a cleaner, i.e. “real jobs”, roles which Rosalind’s family would never consider compatible with personhood…

There’s also a neighbour character, a tarot reader, who seems to be the closest thing to a friend that Rosalind actually has, but it is in this figure where the most frustrating and inconsistent issues of chronology first become very clear, as the neighbour-friend talks about being a young adult during the Second World War, yet is only meant to be around 20 years older than Rosalind, who is a millennial influencer obsessed with Instagram…

Those timings don’t line up, and nor do references in the text to how long it’s been since Rosalind was at high school, how long it has been since she first opened an Instagram account, how long she has lived with Ted, how long it has been since she stopped living with her parents, how long ago she bought the chaise longue, etc etc etc…

Maybe this is meant to be seen as Rosalind’s unreliable memory, but it didn’t feeeeeeel like that to me, though I  am not the sharpest reader (I don’t even have a PhD, which seems to be normal now for people who recreationally read aged over thirty five!?)…

I don’t think one forgets the difference in age between yourself and another to the point where you think they’re 60 when they’re actually 90 years old… Or maybe you do, though, actually(?), if you pay as little attention to other people and the world around you as Rosalind does…

Maybe Marieke Bigg is making this novel more complex than I realised, but I did read it very very quickly quite late at night (late for a loser who doesn’t have any fun any more (e.g. like 11pm-1am), not actually late (e.g. 6am-8)) in two sessions over the weekend, so maybe I did miss something?

So, actually, yeah, yeah, yeah, if these minor issues with temporal consistency are discounted – which at this point I’ve convinced myself they should be – then my only remaining gripe with Waiting for Ted is the abrupt and magical realist adjacent (or just more symbolic and metaphorical than the rest of the novel if not meant to be literal) final five pages (think the ending of Grease but rather than the car suddenly flying due to the power of cigarettes and tight trousers, it’s sorta the relationship equivalent of the opposite)… But that’s minor and, as we’ve come to realise above, I may very well have missed foreshadowing or other tonal clues that permitted or introduced the idea of this ending happening.

Thus, there’s a great chunk of this novel, the vast vast vast majority of it, that is a real pleasure to read. It is bitchy in a funny way and is not particularly biased in either its criticisms and mockery of the rich or the normal (edit to read “the poor and the normal” if you’re one of my affluent readers – also buy my book)… there is an evenhandedness to the satire[s] here that permits a bit of what could be perceived as classism to percolate and land with a little more nuance than one might initially suspect it will…

Everyone is miserable living their shit plastic lives, not only the rich and not only the poor…

Also, almost every single chapter but not quite all opens with the phrase “I’m waiting for Ted” and the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the tiny amount of chapters that don’t feel like they’re missing something… something forgotten, rather than something chosen… Although, whatever, I’m just being a dick, there’s no real problem here… whatever

Whatever

Anyway, yeah, so, why, yes? …

I liked it, I suppose – it is funny… there is good, consistent, humour here, there is firm and clear characterisation for Rosalind and the self-absorbed yet unsustainable life she has built for her self…

Waiting for Ted is mean without being mean-spirited, it’s pointed without being cruel, it’s an engaging, entertaining novel that has meaningful points to make about current online cultures and the lies that people tell to themselves when telling lies to other people online.

Well worth a look!

Order it direct from Dead Ink here.