The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
When Wharton was guided by her steely intelligence, she was wonderful; but this contrived and foolish novel shows how precarious excellence is. The premise of Moon is interesting. When Nick and Susie get married they have an agreement: they’ll spend a year together, sponging off rich friends; but if one of them finds someone who can advance them socially/financially, they’ll be free to take the offer and dissolve the marriage. They first stay at a villa on Lake Como (they chose that over places in Versailles and Monte Carlo). Their idyllic honeymoon is marred by one problem: Nick has scruples that Susie doesn’t. While he’s a non-paying guest at the villa he has no problem smoking the expensive cigars of his absentee benefactor; yet when they leave and he finds Suzie packing four boxes of cigars, he sternly orders her to unpack them. At their next stop, a palace in Venice, Susie – who has a practical approach to “managing” the people she depends on – mails four letters at intervals in order to deceive a husband as to his wife’s whereabouts. When Nick finds out about this, he abruptly leaves Susie. For over six months they’re apart, not even writing to one another. Both continue to live in luxury, thanks to the generosity of friends. They also form relationships, but they’re superficial; they moon about each other. In a sort of comedy of errors, each believes that the other has found someone else, and that their agreement to let the other free is still in effect. This whole scenario is rife with problems. Wharton wants us to believe that a deep and everlasting love exists between Susie and Nick; why, then, couldn’t their initial differences be settled with a sensible conversation? She has Susie look to Nick as a moral compass, but he comes across as a stiff-necked hypocrite. And she wants to make the point that material goods aren’t of true value, yet she saturates the novel with the trapping of the ultra-wealthy. She winds things up with Susie living in a humble abode, taking care of a friend’s five children (and learning all about true values). There Nick finally seeks her out, and they declare their eternal love; they will, we’re to assume, live happily ever after. “ ‘Nick!’ Susie sighed, at peace, as if the one syllable were a magic seed that flung out great branches to envelope them.” Which brings me to the prose, which is exceedingly wordy, and the words are often purple.

Sapiens – Yuval Noah Hurari
What makes this far-ranging study of man so unusual is Hurari’s perspective: he looks at our species as an analytical alien might. His lack of commitment to accepted norms allows him to move away from conventional ways of thinking. One of his major points is that much of what we hold onto as bulwarks of our lives is imagined. Christianity, democracy, capitalism, our homeland – all are concepts manufactured by the mind of man and thus can be categorized as delusions. And he gives full legitimacy to any other set of delusions that a different culture may believe in. Hurari goes into origins – mainly the Cognitive, Agriculture and Scientific Revolutions that allowed our species to become dominant – but it’s only to show the path that led us to where we are today. It is today (and the future) that concerns him. Hurari acknowledges how disturbing his undermining of the status quo can be. He writes, “Perhaps happiness is synchronizing one’s personal delusions of meaning with the prevailing collective delusions. As long as my personal narrative is in line with the narratives of the people around me, I can convince myself that my life is meaningful, and find happiness in that conviction.” To him this is “quite a depressing conclusion.” His commitment is to the truth, as he sees it, and he’s equipped with persuasive arguments to back up his views.

I Thought of Daisy – Edmund Wilson
Wilson’s intellectuality undermined his strengths as a novelist. He encumbers Daisy with a schematic framework aimed at presenting different life views; the narrator goes on tangents about Sophocles, politics, metaphysics; the long descriptive passages are Proustian attempts at evoking moods. The plot consists mainly of a series of Greenwich Village parties in which eccentric types – poets, revolutionaries, hangers-on – drink and talk. Though aspects of this were fairly interesting, they obscured what should have been the book’s main focus – namely, the person the narrator is thinking of in the title: Daisy. She’s an emphatic creation, fresh, lively, sparkling. That sparkle is sometimes dulled (due mostly to her problematic relationships with men), and I felt the absence because I cared for her and wanted her to be happy. When the narrator is with Daisy he has an appeal that’s otherwise absent. The same can be said for the author; unlike his other characters Daisy is earthbound, and when she’s present Wilson is pleasingly earthbound too. At the end the narrator expounds on what Daisy offers him: “. . . if only I could hit off, in prose, her attitudes, her gestures, her expressions, the intonation of her voice – preserve them so they should not vanish, as Degas had done for his dancers . . .” In sections Wilson fully succeeds in doing this. But Daisy makes brief appearances in which she reflects the man she’s presently with (that schematic framework at work); only in the last section do we get her undistilled. In his Foreword, written in 1953 (the novel came out in 1929), Wilson says that he had an idea for a sequel, one which he abandoned when he couldn’t find his notes. He considers this “no great loss. By the time you have finished this book, if you do, you will no doubt have had enough of Daisy . . .” Though he’s wrong there, I should be grateful for what I got of her. And maybe his offhand words account for his meager output of fiction. Which is a shame, because in parts of Daisy and in the stories that make up Memoirs of Hecate County he could be remarkable in a unique way.

Orley Farm – Anthony Trollope
In this flat second installment of the Orley Farm saga the characters I found invigorating are either absent or watered down. Early on Mrs. Mason confesses to two close friends that she forged the will. There’s much moralizing about her dastardly act, but the repentant woman is forgiven. The trial proceeds and she’s found not guilty. Trollope has sympathy for Mrs. Mason, but he also has a problem with a legal system that allows justice to be subverted by wily lawyers. The main dilemma involves her righteous son, who believes passionately in his mother’s innocence. It’s determined that he must be told of her guilt, and how will he take this blow? He agonizes, considering what she did to be “the foulest fraud that practiced villains can conceive!” – but he too winds up forgiving her (in his stern fashion). It has been decided that, after the trial, Orley Farm must be returned to its rightful owner. This is done, and there things end, leaving the fate of a handful of characters up in the air. Not that I cared much; the novel was too emotionally overwrought and high-minded for any but Victorian readers. In regard to that high-minded tone, there’s a matter that Trollope chooses to gloss over. It has to do with a side story: Felix, who is portrayed as exceedingly upright, is to marry Madeline, who is a paragon of virtue (and beautiful and wealthy to boot). But there’s an obstacle. Before he met her, Felix had been grooming a lower class young woman to be his wife. He had entered into a legal document with the neer-do-well father stipulating that a marriage is to take place; he has hired someone to teach Mary Snow the niceties of manners and to watch over her activities. This lady informs Felix that Mary exchanged letters with a young man and met him once under a lamp-post. Felix has a talk with a contrite Mary in which he gently proposes that they aren’t meant for one another and that they should call off their union. The angry father is appeased by a considerable sum of money (which he will drink away). Thus Felix is provided with a convenient “out” from his entanglement. Trollope the moralist expresses no misgivings about an episode that struck me as thoroughly unsavory.

Summer - Edith Wharton

Charity Royall was born on the Mountain, a place so impoverished and primitive that it exists outside the realm of civilized society. Lawyer Royall had gone there and taken her from a mother all to willing to give up the infant; since then, for eighteen years, Charity had lived in his house in North Dormer. The first spoken words in this novel, which Charity repeats twice as she walks alone to her job at the library, are “How I hate everything!” She’s an outsider in a village that offers her nothing; as for Lawyer Royall, she maintains a defiant and wary distance from him. She sees herself as a person without a future, and her negativity is hardening into a shell. But she opens up when a young architect arrives to sketch the old houses. Her relationship with Lucius, which grows into a love affair, is daringly portrayed, considering when the book was written. Charity’s sexual passion is real and positive. Though obstacles arise and bring an end to their idyllic meetings, Charity isn’t a rejected lover; yet that’s the role she all too readily accepts. I wondered why she didn’t fight for what she wants – and for what Lucius wants too. Throughout the book looms the presence of Lawyer Royall. Charity’s conflicted attitude toward him makes it difficult for the reader to pin down an already complex character. His strong feelings for Charity seem to be a mix of carnal and parental love, and how can these coexist? The ending Wharton gives us is troubling. It seems to be a dead end, a submission to a dismal and barren existence. And, again, I wondered why Charity accepted winter and didn’t fight for summer.

The Ragged Way People Fall Out of Love – Elizabeth Cox

Though Cox inundates the reader with feelings, throughout this short novel I felt as if I were standing on the sidelines watching a game I wasn’t much interested in. The prose is good, and Molly and her daughter Franci are, at a certain level, well-drawn. But when dire events occur their reactions seemed to be watered down versions of emotions. As I read on other flaws began to accumulate. The male characters are sketched in; William, the husband, comes across as an automaton, and Ben, Molly’s new love interest, is no more than a prop. The plot twists are makeshift (such as the dead son blithely returning from the dead). We occupy the minds of all the characters, but the book is evasive as to why somebody does something. Why don’t we learn one thing about the woman William leaves Molly for? The topper came near the end when a peripheral character – a disturbed young man – sets fire to himself. The whole town gets weepy over this. If you too get weepy, you’ve failed the test, because Zack has been inserted in the book merely to elicit your tears. It came as no surprise to learn that Cox has spent most of her life teaching in creative writing programs. She does everything right as far as technique goes. But it would serve a useful purpose if she were to assign this novel to her students, telling them that they need to identify the ways in which she fails to make her story real.

The Devil to Pay in the Backlands – Joao Guimaraes Rosa (Portuguese)

The form this novel takes is an unbroken five hundred page monologue to an unidentified listener – the reader. In a disjointed way Riobaldo tells the story of his life, but two things predominate, and stand in stark contrast: warfare between lawless bands of heavily armed factions operating in the wilds of Brazil and the narrator’s love for another man. It’s not a comradely love but a physical desire. Though Riobaldo has sexual encounters with women, and none with Diadorim, the women are inconsequential while Diadorim is all-important. The bulk of this bulky novel is filled with descriptions of battles conducted by men who are the epitome of machismo. But Rosa also gives us noble acts and sentiments and a lot of philosophical asides (none of which made sense to me). The colloquial voice works, and the novel has a freewheeling drive. But that drive was going nowhere. No plot emerged, just more battles, more mooning over Diadorim. It all struck me as a pointless endeavor, and at the halfway point I bid goodbye forever to the backlands.

The Secret History – Donna Tartt
Binky Urban. I keep seeing her name in the Acknowledgments section of books by young authors. She’s an agent, a mover and shaker in the literary world (I can hear “Binky darling!” being called out across crowded rooms at a thousand New York parties). But here’s the thing: why didn’t she tell Donna Tartt that her novel was twice as long as it needed to be? Because it is, and after the halfway point I found myself laboring along in desultory fashion until I ground to a halt at page 350 (with over two hundred pages to go). I did read the ending (hysteria, culminating in a suicide) and the Epilogue (Purple Prose). The hysteria and Purple Prose were a surprise, because for the first half things were under control. I diagnosed Tartt as an obsessive-compulsive. She constructed History carefully; part of its length is due to how complete everything is (except the murder of the farmer during the Bacchanalian revel, which is left hazy due to its improbability). I’m okay with OCD writing as long as things don’t get stagnant. A lot of the credit for the book’s readability goes to the first person narrator; I was smoothly persuaded to accept the premise of an assemblage of oddball college geniuses studying Greek under the tutelage of the enigmatic Julian. A few minor glitches. For so careful as writer, there are gaps in logic (which I won’t go into). And the Edenesque world of privilege Tartt creates was marred by the occasional intrusion of Bret Easton Ellis’s brand of ennui (he was her classmate at Bennington and she dedicated the book to him). Part One ends with the murder that was foretold in the Prologue; the scene is done with admirable restraint, so I entered Part Two in a good frame of mind. It’s here that Binky should have intervened: “Donna, girl, is all this necessary? I mean the investigation, the tactics to avoid detection. It goes on and on, and it’s really not that interesting. We just need to know what effects their deed has on the principals. Maybe you could close with a chance meeting between Richard and Camilla years later?” Instead I think Tartt was encouraged to go on and on (maybe Binky saw a blockbuster as more marketable). It also seems as if, in true OCD fashion, Tartt couldn’t let go of characters she had become enraptured with. Indiscriminate encouragement and rapture are a bad combo, especially for a young writer, and would account for the book’s nosedive in the second half. And so it is that yet another meteor in the literary firmament fizzles out in the aboveground backyard pool. In closing, I want to thank Binky Urban for making this review possible.

The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
For much of this book I didn’t like or sympathize with Lily Bart. Wharton constantly lavishes praise on her social skills, composure and, most of all, her beauty. In a two page stretch she’s described as “tall and noble” and having a “slender majesty.” The words “noble” and “majesty” don’t seem appropriate for a woman who is pursuing marriage to a man she has absolutely no feelings for simply because his wealth can enable her to live in the gilded world she’s accustomed to. It’s a world in which possessions and parties and knowing the right people are what counts; morally, ethically and intellectually it’s a wasteland. Selden tries to convince Lily that there’s a more worthwhile way of life. Lily perceives that he’s right, but that doesn’t sway her. Lily and Selden could be in love; but, for Lily, he doesn’t have money; and, in Selden’s case, he’s always ready to retreat from a true commitment. The convoluted prose in which the story is told shows the pernicious influence of Henry James. Still, it was an active book, with much social maneuvering, and it held my attention. Then, near the end, an emotional sea change took place. Lily descends into the dinginess she had always feared: a boarding house, a job in a workroom making hats. And she can’t do that competently: “Since she was brought up to be ornamental, she could hardly blame herself for failing to serve any practical purpose; but her discovery put an end to her consoling sense of universal efficiency.” There’s a solution to her money woes, but it would involve blackmail; though the victim eminently deserves it, Lily can’t save herself by this means. She finally took shape for me: a flawed person, but not a bad or hurtful one. I felt the sympathy I had long withheld. Felt it fully. I was moved by the paragraphs in which she takes too much chloral; this perfectly-executed presentation of a state of mind is given to us with no convolutions. Just the straight truth of a woman who desires above all the oblivion offered by sleep. She welcomes the sense of subjugation the drug brings to her; before she yields to the warm abyss of unconsciousness she thinks, languidly, “Tomorrow would not be so difficult after all: she felt sure she would have the strength to meet it. She did not quite remember what she had been afraid to meet, but the uncertainty no longer troubled her.”

May Flavin – Myron Brinig
Up to the halfway point this had been a grounded, naturalistic novel about the lives of uneducated slum-dwellers. Then, abruptly, the plot introduces a sultry prostitute, a knife fight, etc. What had been realistic became garishly ludicrous. Maybe Brinig decided that the joys and travails of his characters were lacking in interest and that he needed to spice things up. But there’s drama to be found in any life; what’s needed is an author with the imagination and empathy to see the uniqueness and importance of so-called “common” people. Brinig committed the cardinal sin in fiction: he resorted to melodrama. I quit reading when the knives came out, though I did peek at the ending; and, sure enough, two of May and Mike’s children become world-famous movie stars. Yeah, right, and I’m the Queen of Sheba.

A Hero of Our Time – Mikhail Lermontov (Russian)
A young man wrote this book. A talented young man who would surely outgrow the juvenile posing that mars his portrayal of the reckless, handsome, world-weary hero. Pechorin is highly critical of his many faults, but in a romanticized way. As a result, the probing into his character merely reveals one devil of a dangerous fellow (especially to women). In a long letter from an ex-lover, we see Lermontov’s conceit in full bloom (for he, not Vera, wrote the letter to Pechorin): “One who has loved you once cannot look at other men without a certain disdain, not because you are better than they – oh no! But there is some singular quality in your nature, something particular to you, something proud and mysterious.” In “Princess Mary” (the story which makes up more than half of the book) Pechorin engages in a prolonged and calculated seduction, but when he achieves his goal he kills the love that Mary has for him with the words, “Princess, did you know that I have been laughing at you?” He also kills a rival in a duel. He seems somewhat upset by his destructive actions, but accepts them as inexplicable aspects of his complex nature. Lermotov is credited with introducing psychological insight into fiction (though the novel came out in 1840, it has a modern feel; the prose, in particular, is not at all dated). He may have introduced psychological issues, but others would have to provide the insights. Pechorin is said to be the prototype of the existential man, but I’ve never figured out what that was. This author’s fame rests partly on his early death. Being killed in a duel at age twenty-six is a romantic way to go, and tends to create a legend.

The Touchstone – Edith Wharton
Since Wharton’s was thirty-eight when she wrote her first novel (Touchstone is a mere eighty-two pages long), youth can’t be blamed for how bad it is. The influence of Austen and Henry James is evident in the wordy and convoluted prose: “He had never been more impressed by the kind of absoluteness that lifted her beauty above the transient effects of other women, making the most harmonious face seem an accidental collocation of features.” But the main fault lies in the premise and its repercussions. Glennard has in his possession letters written by Margaret Aubyn, a now-deceased Famous Woman Author. In order to get money to marry Alexa, he sells the letters; they’re published without his identity being revealed; they cause a sensation. I reread the pages that allude to the content of these “shocking” letters; though Wharton keeps it vague, it’s clear they aren’t passionate love letters, nor do they put the woman’s soul on display. But after Glennard marries Alexa, he begin to suffer from guilt about what he’s done. It grows until he’s “tortured” and “anguished.” Initially he tries to conceal his act from Alexa; then he begins to do things to reveal to her the “damnable, accursed” sin he has committed. In the course of this agonizing his feelings toward his wife change: love turns into indifference, then abhorrence sets in. At the same time he begins to moon about the dead author (he sits by her grave, feeling close to her). The ending is full of impassioned verbiage and makes no more sense than any of the nonsense that precedes it. If Wharton had written a comic novel about a madman, she wouldn’t have had to change much. One last note: two references are made to a child. I hunted down these pages. Yes, a nursery and a baby are mentioned. Apparently, in all the hubbub about the letters, the baby got lost.

No Fond Return of Love – Barbara Pym
If you haven’t read any Pym, don’t start with this novel, for you won’t find her virtues on display here. It’s a meandering and purposeless effort, with too many characters and too many strands of plot. Worse, I didn’t believe in the people nor what they did. Since I found reading the book a bit depressing, I wondered about Pym’s state of mind when she wrote it. At times – and this is atypical of her – there are glimmers of cynicism and malice (which, actually, constitute the only interesting moments, because the rest is plodding). In a tacked-on “happy” ending Pym asks us to accept one of the most unconvincing love matches in fiction. I think she knew how lame it was, for she adds a short addenda in which we’re in the mind of a minor character. He hears a taxi but is not quick enough to get to his window to see Aylwin emerge with a bunch of flowers and Dulcie open the door for him. Last lines of the novel: “He took a mauve sugared almond out of a bag and sucked it thoughtfully, wondering what, if anything, he had missed.” He didn’t miss a thing.

Father and Son – Edmund Gosse
In this book, subtitled “A Study of Two Temperaments,” Gosse examines his relationship with his father, beginning with his earliest memories and ending when he leaves home at seventeen. In the mid-1800s Philip Gosse was a noted biologist, but his thoughts and emotions were dominated by his zealous religiosity. He tried to instill his beliefs in his only son; moreover, he convinced himself that the boy was one of the anointed. Initially Edmund tries to fulfill the role his father has in mind for him, but as he matures he begins to harbor doubts about religion; he goes so far as to engage in private acts which test his father’s dogma (he worships a chair and then awaits God’s punishment; none comes). Edmund will go on to lead a worldly life in London; the father is disappointed, but grants him his freedom. The author of the Introduction claims that Father and Son “describes the horrors of a Puritan upbringing.” I wonder if he read the same book I did. We all grow up affected by our parents’ flaws and limitations. Edmund had an odd upbringing, with demands and repressiveness, but he was never mistreated, nor was he unhappy. Though his father was a reserved man not given to displays of affection, Edmund always knew that he was loved. I found much that is almost idyllic in his childhood. Edmund’s mother shared her husband’s religious fervor; but what struck me forcefully was how perfectly matched these two were; the boy grew up in a house where there was contentment based on a deep, quiet affection. His mother dies (cancer); years later Philip remarries, and Edmund’s stepmother is another beneficent presence. This isn’t a lugubrious book; on the contrary, Gosse presents many events in a humorous light. At age ten Edmund is baptized (which, in the sect of the Brethren, is only done to adults who experience a momentous religious awakening). He’s made an exception because, his father reasons to the congregation, in early infancy his son already had “knowledge of the Lord” and had “possessed an insight into the plan of salvation.” After little Edmund’s baptizement, the boy immediately becomes “puffed out with a sense of my own holiness.” He begins to lecture his father, to treat the servants haughtily, and to mock his young friends. In other words, he becomes an insufferable prig.

Australia Felix – Henry Handel Richardson
Ethel Florence Richardson chose to publish, in the early 1900s, under a male pseudonym. This Aussie lady had an ability to write narrative fiction that is Trollopian in its scope and flow; for four hundred pages I remained unflaggingly absorbed in the fortunes of Richard Mahoney. Over the several decades covered, we sees signs of emotional problems, such as his intense dislike of the godforsaken land he’s stuck in and his sense of isolation from the people around him. Yet he seems stable and sensible, he works hard to achieve a comfortable life as a doctor in frontier Australia, and he loves his wife. Polly is, for much of the book, presented as simple, obedient and nothing more (in Richard’s eyes “pure, clean and sweet”); the lack of conflict in their relationship is offset by a large cast of secondary characters, all with dilemmas. Things ramble along pleasurably, but at the end my suspicion that Richardson set out without a firm grasp as to where she was headed was solidified by some questionable plot twists. Richard is suddenly in the grip of a debilitating depression. Despite this he still has enough energy (and optimism) to sell all his worldly goods in preparation for an arduous return trip to England, where he will have to start over from scratch. Polly, who at this point has a mind of her own, is justifiably appalled. In the final scene they’re aboard a ship. As it departs, Richard asks Polly to come on deck; but she, “with an eye to the future, was already encoffined in her narrow berth.” I felt that the author had arranged a setup for the second installment of a trilogy: How will Richard and Polly fare in England? Read The Way Home and find out – and I care enough that I will. The faults of this novel, such as its haphazard structure, are offset by its strengths. Faults can even become virtues in the hands of a prodigious talent: that overly-large cast of peripheral characters, though often difficult to sort out, serve to create a colorful tapestry of life.  *

Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
The novel opens at a funeral for a woman whose descent began with a tingling in her arm; soon she’s engulfed in madness and pain. Vernon Halliday, a former lover, comments that she would have killed herself if she had been able to. He’s speaking to his “oldest friend” and another of her lovers, Clive Linley. Vernon is the editor of a newspaper, Clive a composer. Shortly after the funeral, Clive experiences a tingling in his hand; then Vernon begins to get the sense that he doesn’t exist. Worried that they will go the way of poor Molly, both men promise that, if one of them is disabled, the other will intercede and end his life. But the tingling and the feeling of non-existence disappear entirely from the book, and we go off into two separate story lines. Clive works on a symphony, and we get lengthy meditations on music and creativity. Quite boring stuff, though its inclusion boosts the word count above the novella category. As for Vernon, he’s gotten possession of photos of a would-be prime minister in drag, and decides to print them. The yellow journalism part is more lively, but at this point I felt mired in a deeply-ingrained grubbiness; not helping matters was the fact that the two main characters (and all minor ones) were eminently distasteful. Clive botches his symphony and Vernon gets fired as editor; both “friends” blame the other for their downfall and go into an attack mode that can only, considering its virulence, be attributed to mutual psychosis. And it’s here that the city of Amsterdam comes into play. Vernon invites himself there to attend a performance of Clive’s symphony. The men are pretending that they’ve patched things up, but they still despise one another. So what are they planning? It seems that in liberal Holland some unsavory types with medical degrees will, for a price, eliminate inconvenient relatives. McEwan had included the strange symptoms and the death pact at the beginning because each man intends to have the other killed. If all this seems inane, the final twelve page stretch is the capper. At a party Vernon and Clive have spiked drinks that they maneuver the other into drinking (“Cheers!”). Later, drugged and hallucinating, they’re visited in their hotel rooms by a doctor and his nurse (whom they both believe to be Molly); they joyfully sign release forms and are dispatched by injections. McEwan was credited by many critics as being witty and wicked, but flailing about with a barbed stick is neither. What is truly amusing about this nasty, empty little novel is that it won the Booker Prize.

The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
Wharton cared enough about her three characters and their predicament to build a solid foundation from which she could move into the rarefied realm of passion. At first she observes the rites and ceremonies of upper crust New Yorkers, circa 1870, with an amused detachment. But when the focus narrows to Newland Archer’s evolving and shifting feelings for two women, things darken. Newland loves Ellen but marries May. Timing and circumstances play a deciding role: if, before he met Ellen, he hadn't already been engaged to May (and thus committed, according to the dictates of society), all would be different. Wharton imparts an element of tragedy into this situation by making us believe that Newland and Ellen were meant for one another. His marriage to May is a mistake only in the light of his feelings for someone else. He and Ellen could cast convention aside, but she refuses to be part of destroying a relationship. Newland would destroy his marriage, for he finds it a prison keeping him from what he wants. He proposes to Ellen that they flee to another place where they will be “simply two human beings who love one another, and are the whole of life to each other; and nothing else on earth will matter.” Ellen responds with: “Oh, my dear – where is that country? Have you ever been there?” She shares Newland’s feelings but not his romanticized viewpoint. In this novel of unconsummated love there’s one solitary kiss. May turns out to be resourceful in holding onto her marriage; a strategic deception brings this affair of the heart to an abrupt end. Ellen moves to Paris and Newland buckles down to a life as husband and father. The last chapter, which takes place twenty-six years later, was a risky proposition, but Wharton has such a firm grip on her material that she uses this new perspective to deepen the situation. We learn that Newland found fulfillment with May. Though he looks back at Ellen as “the flower of life” that he had missed, he doesn’t mourn the loss; he has relegated her to an unattainable vision whose rightful place is as a memory. The question of “What if?” has great weight. What would Newland’s and Ellen’s life have been, together? The ache that thought evokes attests to how fully this novel succeeds. *

The Ferrari in the Bedroom - Jean Shepherd

As a young man alone in New York, I considered Jean Shepherd to be my friend. This friendship was carried on via the radio, with me listening to his nightly monologues. The man meant a lot to me; he brought good cheer to my life. In these essays I often caught a sense of that voice from long ago. He was a better talker than he is a writer – I don’t believe he had the patience to put a lot of work into his writing. His monologues had a fluidity and freedom that’s missing from his prose. I also found a more cynical person than the one I heard over the radio. Six of the pieces are very good, and seven others are good. There are a number that don’t come off, and some are duds. But who cares! Jean Shepherd gets a pass. It was a pleasure to spend some more time with my friend. *

The Enemy in the Blanket - Anthony Burgess

This second volume of the Malayan Trilogy: The Long Day Wanes has the virtues of the first, though a bit watered-down. The problem I cited in my previous review has become more serious. My inability to understand Victor Crabbe has progressed to the point where I don’t believe in him. And I dislike the person Burgess has concocted. Victor isn’t a good (nor a faithful) husband to Fenella; this has to do, supposedly, with his love for his previous wife, who drowned in a submerged car while Victor escaped. A tragic scenario explaining Victor’s errant behavior – but really? Why couldn’t Burgess, with all his skills, make this story more convincing? Anyway, Fenella leaves Victor (despite his vows that he has changed and truly loves her), and I applauded her decision. As for the watered-down aspect, the exotic world of Malaya and its gaudy characters are not so vivid as in the first novel. Still, I’ll read volume three.

The Custom of the Country - Edith Wharton

Edith was adept at applying the thumbscrews. In this character study she uses them on Undeen, a woman who values empty showiness – jewels, parties, dresses. She has no regard for things of enduring worth. A diamond bracelet means more to her than her son or her long-suffering parents. To get what she wants (and wanting is her only passion) she uses her beauty to climb the social ladder in New York and Paris. Undeen is willful, selfish, cold, calculating, but she’s also real. At times I felt sympathy for her; she is, in her way, a cripple, lacking in something essential. There are problems with the novel that bring it down a few pegs. Ralph’s suicide seems unsupported, simply convenient to the plot, and there were too many coincidental meetings between Undeen and Moffett (another strong character, though I didn’t believe in his rapid rise to power). Also, Wharton pretty much ignores Undeen’s son; this could be interpreted as a reflection of how Undeen ignored him. But when Wharton gives Paul center stage in the last chapter it’s an oddly flat scene; I don’t know if the author herself had feeling for the boy. The ending – with Undeen, who now has almost everything, left wanting that which she cannot get – doesn’t carry enough weight. Her story should close on a more emphatic note than discontent. Still – a novel that has a lot to say.

Beds in the East - Anthony Burgess

In this final installment of The Long Day Wanes Victor Crabbe is still the weak link; and, since he’s the main character, this proves fatal to the trilogy as a whole. I believe Burgess and Victor are one and the same, and Burgess couldn’t be honest about himself. As a consequence, Victor never rang true. When he was married to Fenella – in the first two volumes – he was constantly having sex with other women. In this book, when she’s left him, he’s chaste. In both cases, his behavior is incomprehensible. Burgess set up a long-ago love that haunts Victor; in the last pages of Beds it’s revealed to Victor that the woman never loved him. This revelation is presented by means of a flimsy coincidence. Shortly thereafter Victor (who has degenerated to the point of grotesqueness) falls in the river and drowns. Though we’ve been in his mind for nearly 500 pages, this episode is seen from someone else’s perspective; the person observing his death doesn’t care about him. Burgess’s callous, offhand destruction of Victor may reflect his own self-loathing and self-pity. At the end one woman briefly mourns him: “Poor Victor,” she thinks, “poor, poor Victor.” And then she’s off to dance.