The Folks That Live on the Hill – Kingsley Amis
To devote the first chapter to a character who will make only a few brief appearances for the rest of the novel raises questions. To construct sentences in which some integral part is left out, so that you can’t follow the meaning, makes one wonder (example: “If there could ever have been truly said to be more of something where something came from, the two at present conversing had run across it”). Adding to my questioning and wondering was a disjointed plot and a cast of oddballs who are barely functioning (or, in the case of Fiona, aren’t functioning at all). Yet when the prose wasn’t making me feel dumb (which wasn’t that often) it was lively, and after I accepted the idiosyncratic characters I found their predicaments to be interesting and often funny. Harry Caldecote emerges as the linchpin of the novel. Harry is cynical about people, and he would deny that kindness motivates him in helping others. Those who come to him needing something – money, a place to stay, a bit of advice – annoy and sometimes anger him, but he gives aid out of a sense of responsibility (which he feels is misguided). Harry is elderly, retired, twice-divorced, presently living with his widowed sister, yet he’s not a sad figure. He and his sister share a quiet, unobtrusive love, and he still finds life enjoyable. One of his pleasures is alcohol – he’s seldom without a drink in his hand, though he’s never drunk – and another is a sharp mind which enables him to view (and navigate safely through) the shambles around him. Amis ends things on fairytale note. He grants all the major characters what they wish for – even pitiful, degraded Fiona has regained her senses – and people who had been depicted throughout in a negative way are treated with kindly insight. After presenting much of the dark side of life, the sixty-six year old author chose to let in the light.

The Lost City of the Monkey God – Douglas Preston
This true story of a search for a pre-Columbian “White City” in the midst of the Honduran rain forest didn’t provide the thrills its lurid title led me to expect. There’s too much background material; we’re past the hundred page mark before Preston sets foot on land. And when we’re at the site, it’s a letdown. The members of the expedition find evidence of what was once a large and flourishing civilization, but it’s been so over-run by vegetation that only experts can determine that anything had been there. In other words, it’s not exactly like breaking into King Tut’s tomb. Artifacts are found – pottery and statues – but the photographs provided show only three objects (why so few?). There had been a great deal of build-up about the dangers to be met in the rainforest, but Preston isn’t able to make the hardships he experiences have much impact. After he departs, he goes into theories as to what role this civilization played in the larger picture of Mesoamerican cultures, and I began skipping chapters. I resumed reading – this time with great interest – when I came to a chapter entitled “White Leprosy.” Back home the members of the expedition (including Preston) start coming down with disturbing symptoms. It turns out that they have leishmaniasis. Humans contract this disease when bitten by a blood-sucking insect that carries the leishmania parasite. Once the parasite is in the human body, the results can be horrific; also, it has developed methods of survival that make treatment very difficult. Preston’s life-or-death adventure doesn’t take place in the jungle, but at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. That said, he doesn’t make his experience of having the disease come alive. As a writer he lacks the ability to create drama; he’s good at explaining factual material, and I think he should stick to writing essays of that sort. As for leishmaniasis, I was surprised that this disease, which I had never heard of, is both ancient and prevalent throughout the world. But it’s mostly the poor that contract it. Because of this, it hasn’t received much attention (or allocation of funds for study). Preston ends with a warning: he presents the factors that could result in leishmaniasis becoming a pandemic.

The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot – Angus Wilson
I agree with what Dorothy Parker had to say of Wilson in an Esquire review (back when that magazine cared about literature): “His is a ruthless knowledge of this woman. Uncanny, you might call it.” When the story opens Meg Eliot is content with her life. After two decades of marriage she’s still in love with her husband and is loved by him; they have enough money to live a comfortable life; she has friends, she does social work. Besides contentment, she feels competent and purposeful. Then Bill is killed. In grief and despair she looks to “the dreadful, dead years ahead.” Though she recovers a shaky equilibrium, there will always be an emptiness. And there are jolts: her financial situation isn’t good; she’ll have to give up her house, she’ll have to get a job. As Meg tries to come up with practical solutions to her new circumstances – and to deal with bouts of loneliness and depression – I found her struggle to be moving. But it’s here that Wilson leaves Meg and switches to another point-of-view, that of her brother David. He will occupy half the book, and I just wasn’t interested in him and his problems. He’s very cerebral, and one has to follow his deep analyses of states of mind; I felt I was reading Henry James (something that was present in the Meg section, but not in so laborious a form). We return to the immediacy of being in Meg’s mind – and the vitality returns to the novel – but again we leave her, never to return. She remains a character, but only in her words and actions as filtered through the perspective of David (whose generosity provides her with too simple a way out of her troubles). On the last page all we get of Meg is a brief excerpt of a letter she writes to David. To abandon the woman he had a “ruthless knowledge of” is a major mistake by Wilson. I wonder if Dorothy Parker, in her full review, hit on this flaw.