A world Fit for Grimsby – Hilary Evans
The smooth, clean prose made for pleasurable reading, the characters were likeable and well-drawn, the premise was interesting: The English town of Riddleford is the birthplace and home of the renowned Jacobean poet and playwright, Nicolas Grimsby (don’t worry, he’s a product of Evans’ imagination). The town develops a thriving business off the tourist trade. It’s amusing how everything is geared to Grimsbililia; we get a depiction of capitalism at its crassest. But a scholar writes a book in which he offers proof that Grimsby was actually born in the neighboring town of Grimwick. A crisis! – will Riddleford’s cash cow be snatched from them by the greedy denizens of Grimwick? Well, I don’t know, because halfway through I quit reading. This is because the premise never goes anywhere; for far too many pages I felt that I was, as a reader, treading in tepid water. The likable characters remained likable but undeveloped to the point of blandness. I wanted something to HAPPEN, but I lost hope that anything would. My attention began to constantly stray from the words on the page, so it was time to move on.

Re-reads
To Each His Own – Leonardo Sciascia (Italian)
I’ve long believed that the best mystery novels will be written by literary novelists. They won’t indulge in cheap tactics, but will rely on logic and character development. Sciascia does both. A pharmacist gets an anonymous death threat letter; it’s made up of words cut and pasted from newsprint. Professor Laurana, a schoolteacher, notices that the words came from a Vatican newspaper. Later, on the first day of the hunting season, the pharmacist and his longtime hunting companion, a doctor, are shot dead. Laurana becomes a detective; his first conclusion is that it was the doctor, not the pharmacist, was the intended victim; the letter was a ruse to divert the authorities from that fact. Laurana pursues his search: who sent the letter, and why was the doctor killed? Laurana doesn’t act out of a desire for justice; he’s just curious. But curiosity killed the cat, a fact that is doubly true in Sicily. This is a look at a morally corrupt society where deceit is second nature, and the innocent are fools.

The Newspaper of Claremont Street – Elizabeth Jolley

Long ago I wrote Jolley a letter in praise of this novel, and she wrote back (all the way from Australia!); her handwritten letter was long and chatty. An unusual response, but one that might be expected from the creator of such an idiosyncratic character as Marge (known in the town as The Newspaper, or just Weekly, due to her dispensing of the news she garners from her job cleaning houses). What surprised me on this reread was how off-base my memories of the book were. Maybe it’s age that has changed how I see things; what I might have taken lightly in the past has grown dark, even, at times, disturbing. Weekly is an odd old bird, basically solitary, with a life in which she received no gifts, including love. Her only aspirations are to have a place of her own (which she never had) and to be alone. The way her story is told – in a disjointed, free-wheeling prose – is a perfect fit for its subject. Newsy comes fully alive, and in depth. Jolley, who was fifty-eight when she wrote this novel, had a gift, untouched by academia. I hope my letter gave her some gratification.

Cold Spring Harbor – Richard Yates
I was tempted to remove this novel from my Most Meaningful Books list. It just isn’t very good. Yates’ simple, straightforward prose still made for easy reading, but seemed (especially the dialogue) to be done in a paint-by-the-numbers mode. No one had my sympathy, not even teen-age Phil; and Evan, who begins as the main character, is someone I came to avidly dislike. The women were either young and stupid or old and alcoholic. All were, of course, unhappy, and at the end were headed towards more bad choices, more unhappiness. Yet that ending did, in this rereading, generate some resonance. It’s acts as a summing up: We poor humans! Yates had a dismal vision of life, earned the hard way – through personal experiences – and his persistence in portraying it deserves respect. Four years after this book came out he died in a VA hospital. He was working on another novel. Of course he was: writing was the only thing that mattered to him. But his best work is his first novel, Revolutionary Road, along with some exemplary short stories. Cold Spring Harbor is a last tired effort by a man beaten down by a hard life, and my sympathy lies with him.

The Trees – Conrad Richter
We begin with a family – a man and his wife and their five children – moving by foot into the Ohio wilderness of the early 1800s. They’re in a twilight world – the mass of trees around them obscures the sun. Worth Luckett is drawn away from civilization; he can find good hunting in this wild world. At a likely spot he stops and builds a small cabin – builds it by himself, with his own capable hands and his few tools. And there this novel takes place. It’s a remarkable recreation of a world that makes demands on people – if they are to survive they must be resourceful, resilient. And they must accept hardships – even death of one of their own – with stoicism. They’re not uncaring, but are on intimate terms with life’s often brutal dictates. What is most remarkable about this novel is how vividly Richter makes each of the characters come alive. I cared about them (though disapproving of some). He has written a novel whose prose is as perfectly rough-hewn as its subject. A remarkable piece of Americana, but also a work of psychological insight. 
(End of this session of re-reads)