[10] Film director Jack Clayton, who had previously directed Room at the Top, got to hear about Gloag's novel from his friend, Canadian writer Mordecai Richler, and he found it “instantly fascinating”.
[11] Though a commercial failure, the film was well reviewed by Roger Ebert, who noted the Gothic elements, such as the bleak rundown house and attempts to commune with the spirit world, together with the parallels to Lord of the Flies.
[24] New York Times reviewer James R. Frakes says the novel “…has all the lineaments of a funnel or a maelstrom: the whole plot movement is a downwards whirl, a relentless plunge from glazed sunshine to devouring night”.
[25] Themes of suffering and alienation continue in Woman Of Character (1973), which involves Anne Mansard's killing of her fiancé and the ensuing complications surrounding his estate.
[26] Paul Theroux in The New York Times says: “It is pervaded by an overwhelming stink of decadence, by subsidiary characters who are perfect demons and who deserve everything the tentative succubus of the title visits upon them.”[27] Gloag's fifth novel Sleeping Dogs Lie (1980) is another murder mystery and whodunit, which the Kirkus reviewer compares to the disordered psychological world of Hitchcock’s Spellbound, with the plot convolutions and red herrings of Agatha Christie.
As in Gloag’s earlier works, childhood traumas and psychiatric intervention mix with crime and sexual intrigues in a complex layered narrative.
[28] In his Spectator review, A. N. Wilson describes Lost and Found as Julian Gloag’s “Sweet Revenge” for the perceived plagiarism of Our Mother’s House by Ian McEwan in The Cement Garden.
New York Times reviewer John Gross notes that Gloag, with his novels from Our Mother’s House onward, “has established a reputation as a master of the macabre”.
The action takes place over a weekend, when Rupert turns up and announces that he is once again divorcing and leaving his job for no real reason except middle-aged malaise.
“Only Yesterday does a splendid job of defining three generations bound by family ties that are stronger than foolishness, ill will, even meanness.”[31] Set in Paris in 1989 (the bicentenary of the Revolution), Love as a Foreign Language (1991) concerns Connie and Walter, who meet on an English-language teaching course.
From the Gallimard description (in translation): “Built in brief sequences, punctuated by a series of images, this book recalls the films of Truffaut or Rohmer whose apparent banality covers a great concern for precision, no word left to chance.
This reflection on the art of living and writing, on the flight of time and the happiness of loving, if it is sometimes tinged with bitterness, never loses its grace or its lightness.”[32] In Le passeur de la nuit (1996), Aaron is a volunteer for Secours-Amitié (a telephone counselling service similar to the British Samaritans), and he also cares for his sick wife whilst running a bookshop and cataloging the immense library of the wealthy Matilda.
The story involves Edinburgh couple Deb and Greg, who live in a rundown flat with a small baby, and eventually enlist a deaf-mute cleaning lady, Mrs Keats.
The first is Only Yesterday, an adaptation of his novel of the same name, directed by Guy Slater and starring Paul Scofield and Wendy Hiller, which was broadcast by the BBC in 1986.