Shosha – Isaac Bashevis Singer (Yiddish)
Singer was no novelist. As a short story writer he excelled, and that’s because he could work within a limited scope. In this novel the incidents are excellent; they just don’t connect up to form a coherent plot. Still, I was involved and often impressed by the flow of ideas from his characters: “. . . eternal life would be a calamity. Imagine some little shopkeeper dying and his soul flying around for millions of years still remembering that once it had sold chicory, yeast, and beans, and that a customer owed it eighteen groschen.” Or: “I don’t recall who said it, that a corpse is all-powerful, afraid of no one. All the living want and ever hope to achieve the dead already have – complete peace, total independence.” The book is set in Poland on the eve of Hitler’s invasion, and it seems like a recapturing by Singer of the life of Jews in that precarious time. His main character, Arele, is a passive (though sexually active) young man who finds it difficult to make decisions; he’s one of many Jews who could get out of harms way but doesn’t. A decision he does make and sticks to is to marry Shosha, a girl he had known when they were children. He describes her as “infantile – physically and mentally backward.” He seems like a protective father of a vulnerable child; I never believed (despite Singer’s half-hearted efforts to convince me) that their feelings for one another went deeper than that. It’s also clear that Singer reached a point where he wanted a way out of all the personal and political crises that had accumulated. So, on the brink of disaster, he simply abandons the narrative. He closes the book with an Epilogue which takes place thirteen years later. Arele has become a famous author; on a visit to Israel he meets a friend from the past, and we get a brief account of the fate of the characters. Concerning Shosha’s death, there’s not a scintilla of emotional impact. I accepted this ending because to go on was too momentous a task, and both Singer and I had grown weary.

Adam and Evelyn – Ingo Schulze (German)
Schulze writes in a cryptic way. Not the prose – that’s clear enough. But in his narrative the reader is constantly having to connect the dots. Characters will talk about an event that we weren’t privy to, and through their words we have to figure out what happened. Or a chapter will begin with a dialogue between two people, but it will be a while before the identity of one of them is revealed. That type of thing. An added difficulty was that the plot involved political problems in Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary (secret police, shootings by border guards, etc.). Though the novel was written in 2008, it seems like a Cold War is still going on; at any rate, I had no idea what the situation was. There’s a lot of traveling by car, a lot of boundaries crossed, and I was lost geographically. However, I stuck with the book because I liked Adam’s third person voice and found his predicament interesting. His wife Evelyn catches him having sex with a woman for whom he’s making a dress (dressmaking is his profession). Evelyn leaves him, he follows. He seems sincere in his remorse and his determination to convince her that they should stay together. Along the way he picks up a young hitchhiker (Katja), and they hit it off (though Adam keeps things platonic). When he occasionally meets up with Evelyn the signals she gives are mostly negative, though she also says that she needs time to make a decision about their marriage. Then, abruptly, Schulze switches to Evelyn’s POV and we find her in bed declaring her love to another guy (Michael). At this halfway point in the novel the complications had risen to an unacceptable level, and I decided that these people would have to work out their futures without me.

Zuleika Dobson – Max Beerbohm
I like Max. I like his collection of stories, Seven Men (particularly “Enoch Soames”), and some of his essays are the best I’ve read. I also like him as a person, as portrayed in those essays and in a book about him entitled Portrait of Max by S. N. Behrman. But I didn’t like his only novel, Zuleika Dobson. Others do: the Modern Library selected it as one of the best novels written in the English language in the 20th Century and the Heritage Press deemed it worthy of a deluxe boxed edition, oversized and adorned with art work. The subtitle of Zuleika is “An Oxford Love Story,” and maybe if I went to Oxford (as did Max) and had a rollicking good time there (as did Max), the novel might hold some charm for me. But I doubt it. The plot hinges on a female so alluring that every man who sees her (even a glimpse is enough) immediately falls in love. But Zuleika’s problem (though it doesn’t much bother her; nothing does) is that she can only love someone who doesn’t give a hoot about her. When the self-absorbed Duke initially shows no interest, she becomes enamored; but when he ‘s suddenly stricken by her beauty, and he too becomes a devotee, she loses all interest. So he decides to commit suicide. Soon every young man at Oxford makes the same decision: they will die for love of Zuleika (something she blithely accepts). What follows from this fantastical premise is decidedly earthbound; besides some silly antics, we get a lot of tiresome talk from people I found unlikable and uninteresting. An artist by the name of George Him has crammed the pages with ninety-six drawings, both in monochrome and color; they’re atrociously garish cartoons. His depiction of the bewitching Zuleika shows her as a vapid painted doll (which may, actually, be fitting). I don’t know whether all the Oxford young men commit suicide because I didn’t read far enough to find out.

Vanish in an Instant – Margaret Millar
In this superior mystery the mystery element takes second place to a psychological study of a varied group of individuals. The third person narrator, an attorney by the name of Meecham, has the problem of loneliness; others are much worse off, and some are emotionally crippled. Lives are entangled, and the untangling makes up the plot. Meecham has an inkling that the motivation for a murder lies in the past, and that it hinges on the identity of a shadowy woman by the name of Birdie. But he’s no sleuth able to perceive what the reader cannot see. Nor does he dispense justice. At the end he lets the person who committed the murder go unpunished. Punishment would serve no purpose, and the guilty party has often treated those in need with kindness. As for Meecham, he finds love. Millar doesn’t establish much of a reason for the love to emerge, she just grants it. I didn’t object; in this grim melange some hope of happiness was welcome. Margaret Millar was married for over forty years to the crime novelist Ross MacDonald. Vanish is similar to his Lew Archer books in the psychological probing, the sharp characterizations, the dark vision of life. I can imagine the two of them typing away, working out the fates of lost souls, and the picture that emerges is somewhat unsettling. I’ve read all the Archer novels – I was, at one period in my life, addicted to them – and now I plan to read more of Millar.

And Even Now - Max Beerbohm

In these essays Max offers a unique perspective on life, and he does it with intelligence and wit. He also establishes a familiarity with the reader; I got the sense that he was speaking to me as a friend. I hope, in the following samples, that I do him justice. In “How Should I Word It” Max skims a book that provides models for people to use in writing letters for a variety of occasions (including romantic breakups). They’re perfect in their tactfulness, generosity, etc. Max begins to “crave some little outburst of wrath, of hatred, of malice.” So he comes up with his own array of letters (one, in response to a “small, cheap, hideous” wedding present: “Perhaps you were guided in your choice by a definite wish to insult me. I am sure, on reflection, that this was so. I shall not forget.”). In “Hosts and Guests” he gives convincing arguments that all of humanity can be classified as one or the other. He puts himself firmly in the “Guest” category; on those occasions when he must be a host, he fulfills this role only passably well (he tries hard to avoid a “frozen look” when he first glances at a restaurant bill set before him). “William and Mary” is a love story. After his friend’s marriage, Max visited him and his wife; he found her to be delightful. He came often to their home and observed their relationship with a sense of wonder; they were blessed. But Mary died in childbirth (as did the baby); afterwards William volunteered to go to a war zone as a reporter; he was killed. Many years later Max finds himself in the vicinity of where they had lived; with some trepidation he takes a detour, half hoping that the house will no longer be there; but it is, in decay. What follows, as Max stands at the door, is an evocation of loss that is surprising and moving.

Stories - Elizabeth Jolley

A strange mishmash. The first six stories are interconnected, though they skip huge gaps in time. They depict a family – a mother, son, daughter – existing precariously on the fringes of society. The daughter serves as narrator and is the most sensible of the three. She’s likeable, and there’s pathos in her efforts to fend off chaos (though she often succumbs to the antics of the others). Despite the setbacks they face, the Morgans have an unquenchable ability to enjoy whatever comes their way. Their love for one another is interlaced with verbal abuse (when the mother calls her son a “son of a bitch” he answers, “Well if I’m the son of a bitch dear lady you must be the bitch”; after this routine comeback there’s wild laughter all around). But the last of the Morgan stories was so fragmented and impressionistic that I had no idea what was happening. It was also devoid of liveliness, which turned out to be a harbinger; the shapeless mood pieces that follow are about life’s outcasts, but unhappiness can’t be served up in such a drab, plodding, muddled way. I skipped to the self portrait at the end called “A Child Went Forth.” It starts out well, then it too loses coherency and focus. I found myself wondering whether Jolley’s undisciplined wandering was an artistic choice or a symptom.

Can You Forgive Her? - Anthony Trollope

I do forgive Alice. I’m also grateful to Trollope for entertaining me for 800 pages. That said, the first volume of this double-decker is better than the second. More care was taken in the characterizations and the prose, and in the second half the predicaments developed in the beginning simply go through a process of resolution. The knotty twists and turns and changes in thinking are unraveled and things begin moving in a straight line. Alice’s initial dilemma has to do with her reluctance to marry the man she loves. What holds her back is that he’s perfect – steady in his love for her, always composed and sensible and kind. Alice, who is flawed and knows it, has the uncomfortable feeling that life with such a paragon of virtue will place her at a disadvantage; this feeling leads her to make some foolhardy decisions, the worst of which is getting involved with the far from virtuous George Vavasor; his evolution into a monster borders on the unbelievable – but not quite. Trollope’s understanding of human psychology turns what could have been a soap opera into literature. He was even adept at high comedy. A side story involves Alice’s widowed aunt and the two suitors clumsily pursuing her. Neither man is a match for the cunning, manipulative and eminently practical Aunt Greenow. This is the first in a series of Palliser novels, but I won’t be reading the others; politics loomed ahead, and the conflicts that initially engaged me have been put to rest.

My Brother - Jamaica Kincaid
Kincaid must be praised for her honesty; she expresses feelings that are “unacceptable” (most notably, hatred for her mother). She returns to the island of Antigua to try to help her brother, who’s dying from AIDS; it’s an unpleasant task, an unpleasant reunion with people and a place that she wanted no part of. She presents her complex and conflicted emotions in an incantatory prose style, a cross between Gertrude Stein (simple and repetitive) and Henry James (she follows a thought through its many convolutions). I originally listened to the book read on tape by the author, and the style worked quite well – better than it did when I read it. In my review of the autobiographical Lucy I was left with questions about what would become of the young protagonist; some of those questions were answered in this book. The answers aren’t pleasant or easy ones. Unlike her brother, Kincaid escaped her mother and the stifling world of Antigua, but only physically. Her life in the United States has the trappings of happiness, but she’s aware of how hard it is to shake off past influences; she worries about the effects her old destructive feelings will have on her present-day relationships. It turns out that her misgivings were well-founded. A look at her biography reveals that she and the man she was married to in My Brother subsequently divorced.

Penhally - Caroline Gordon
This book has strong virtues and stronger flaws. The main virtue is the author’s ability to write well: the narrative voice is smooth and scenes come to life. But taken as a whole – as a chronicle of the fall of the house of Penhally – the novel lacks structure. After an excellent beginning Gordon seems hellbent for a conclusion (one generation is covered in about five pages). The irascible Nicholas, present in the opening section, is a forceful character, but many who follow are indistinguishable from one another. Relationships (cousins, great-grandfathers, slaves belonging to this and that person) got so complicated that I gave up trying to sort everybody out; my reading became inattentive. The ending to this multi-generational saga rings decidedly false; a bullet in the heart is dramatic, but the man Gordon created would never have fired that shot. Last word . . . About the author’s use of ellipses . . . Was she trying to set a world record?

The Incomparable Max - Max Beerbohm
Beerbohm’s writing is the epitome of elegance, carried off effortlessly (though such finely-crafted prose surely took great effort). I don’t read for an author’s style, but this book was an exception. My only quibbles are that the prose occasionally turned from elegant to ornate and some pieces were too learned – way over my head. Also, Beerbohm’s ideal audience is upper-class Brits familiar with the post-Victorian era. I skipped a few essays involving people and matters I knew little or nothing about, and I couldn’t stomach more than five pages of the foolishness in the long last story, “The Happy Hypocrite” (which should be expunged from the record). Yet much is outstanding, particularly the pieces on his brother and on King George the Fourth. In “Diminuendo” he gives the reason why his literary efforts were limited, and all writers will find his thoughts of interest. If you haven’t read the two stories from Seven Men – “Enoch Soames” and “A. V. Laider” – you have a unique treat awaiting you. Max is bracing company, intelligent, original, entertaining and eminently likeable. One feels better after spending time with him, and I can understand why his contemporaries considered him to be “Incomparable.”