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.