The Bishop’s Bedroom – Piero Chiaro (Italian)

What a dud. Billed as an erotic psychological thriller humming with suspense, there’s no eroticism, no thrills, no suspense and no psychology. Of the three characters (including a vapid first person narrator), the most colorful is Orimbelli, but after you describe him as an unscrupulous womanizer, you’ve covered his entire personality. The shocking twist at the end is ho-hum predictable; when an author introduces a poison early on in a book, you know it will be used. We do get a tour by sailboat of a lake in northern Italy, and if you like boats, and are interested in jibs and winds and that sort of thing, this is the book for you. The superlatives I’ve used above (“humming,” “shocking”) come from reviews and blurbs by authors. Makes one wonder. Am I lacking in sensibilities, or are they? Someone sure is. To me their praise is the equivalent to saying that a drayhorse is Secretariat. Another thing to wonder about is why I read the whole thing. Well, it’s short, a novella with padding, and the prose is simple, straightforward. And there’s nothing confusing or daunting about it. I had nothing better to do, so I mindlessly turned pages. Has my reading life come to this sad end?

The Two Worlds of William March – Roy S. Simmonds

Simmonds closes his biography of William March with these words: “Those who know, love and admire his work live in the belief that one day March will be recognized as one of the most remarkable, talented and shamefully neglected writers that America has produced in this or any other century.” I know, love and admire March’s work, though I hold out no hope that he will rise in stature, for the literary world has moved away from the virtues of his writing. But this is a biography, and as a subject March presents difficulties. Simmonds is able to give an account of the external facts of his life: A childhood and youth in the rough world of Alabama’s lumber camps; his lack of formal education (he didn’t get a high school diploma until he was in his twenties); his experiences as a battlefield sergeant in WWI (he received the Croix de Guerre, the Distinguished Service Cross and the Navy Cross); his rise in the Waterman Steamship Company from clerk to vice president. But what made the man tick? This is something Simmonds cannot reveal. March never married, and there is no evidence of any close relationship. He was sociable and had many friends, but he kept them at a distance. He had episodes of depression, but what was bothering him is unknown. Perhaps all we can know of his inner self is to be found in his fiction. To fill the 325 pages of this book Simmonds gives detailed synopses of March’s work. Not just the six novels, but the many stories. Also, he provides lengthy excerpts from reviews of the time (along with his own opinions). Of course, one should read the novels and stories, and decide for oneself their merits. The value of this biography, for me, is that it has revived feelings I had when I was reading March in my teens and early twenties. The worlds he created – and that I entered – affected me emotionally. More than any other writer, he spurred me on as a reader.

Maggie-Now – Betty Smith

This novel begins in Ireland, where circumstances cause Pat to run off to America. We get to know him, and it’s the portrait of someone incapable of love. He’s a negative force operating in the sphere of his relations with the people around him. He marries, mainly out of expediency, and Maggie is born. His wife is a good woman, a good mother. But, when she’s in her forties, she again becomes pregnant and dies in childbirth. The infant she gives birth to – Denny – becomes the responsibility of Maggie, who’s in her early teens. This responsibility stifles her life – she doesn’t have the experiences of other girls. But Maggie is strong, resilient, accepting. She’s a positive life force, endowed with an appealing buoyancy. Smith has the gift – and I don’t use that word lightly – of pulling the reader into a story and its characters. I cared about the people who populated these 400 pages. Primarily Maggie, of course, for we follow her from infancy to middle age. But even secondary characters have substance and validity. That said, I did question one main character: Claude, the man Maggie falls in love with and marries. Whereas all the others in this book are grounded, Claude is odd. In the way he speaks, in his actions. Did I believe in him – did I believe in their love? Well, yes, but there was a reluctance. Especially since one of the odd things Claude does, every Spring, is disappear. He simply leaves the house, without a word of goodbye, and doesn’t come back until the cold weather sets in. He never writes, and on his returns gives no explanation for his actions. Maggie doesn’t demand one, and in time becomes resigned to this situation. I, however, wasn’t resigned. At the novel’s end the author has Claude provide an explanation for his disappearances, but I found it quite weak. Also – a writer makes decisions – why, in the closing pages, does Smith leave Maggie (who never had children of her own, something she wanted dearly) alone and fearful? And then give the final four pages to the reprehensible Pat’s disposal of Claude’s ashes? I’m spending so many words describing what was wrong with a novel that did so many things right. I thought Smith was a one-book author – her first was the wonderful A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – but many of the virtues of that book are to be found in Maggie-Now.