Regeneration - Pat Barker

Too monochromatic. This is an anti-war novel, and it repeats an old formula – an atrocity, which is the cause of a patient’s trauma, is revealed. Very gory stuff, served in large doses. The romance of Sarah and Prior came alive, but Barker didn’t devote much time to it. Back to the trenches and extended talk of misery. I went AWOL.

Black Weather - Berton Roueche

I like noirish psychological mysteries involving everyday people, so I started this with anticipation. It was a big letdown. Since it was short, I finished it – or did I? I examined the book to see if some last pages had been torn out. None were, so I had to conclude that Roueche had simply never written an ending.

Jill - Philip Larkin

Larkin wrote this when he was twenty-one, and his youth accounts for many of the book’s problems. He had talent, but no idea what to do with it. He gives us a depressing study of a misfit, a humorous memoir of Oxford, a fantasy, a nightmare. It doesn’t add up. But individual scenes are good, and the character of John stands out in all the confusion (probably, I suspect, because Larkin was writing about himself).

A Walker in the City - Alfred Kazin

This memoir didn’t connect with me. There’s too much intellectual filtering going on, and as a result young Alfred remains shadowy. Kazin was a noted literary critic, but he failed to do what a good writer of fiction or autobiography does instinctively: make people predominate over ideas.

The Stories of Katherine Mansfield

A stylist whose prose scintillates. Mansfield uses stream of consciousness successfully, she’s an impressionist painting with words. She’s also a miniaturist, capturing the isolated moment, the momentary feeling. Plot is not her thing. But that’s what I want in a story, and in about half of these there’s not even an implied one. The most atypical piece in the book – “The Woman at the Store” – was the best. It’s a harrowing horror story, executed with calculation and subtlety.

Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
While I can understand why this was such a success in England, I increasingly lost interest until, just short of the end, I skimmed. I found things too pat. The monstrous country bumpkins turned out to be pussy cats (which was a letdown). Flora navigates too smoothly, with all her plans panning out without a hitch. Everybody has one dimension. It was humorous for a while, but petered out.

Bitter Lemons - Lawrence Durrell
Until the halfway point I was somewhat involved. This first part concerned Durrell’s life in Cyprus (getting to know the colorful characters, buying a house, etc.). But then he goes into the labyrinth politics of the country, and I felt no desire to wade through that.

The Incurable Wound - Berton Roueche
These pieces first ran in The New Yorker. As “narratives of medical detection” they’re as good as it gets. The writing is concise and clear; the author embeds technical information in true-life stories. I found every one of these pieces to be entertaining – and also learning experiences. My favorite was “Ten Feet Tall,” in which Roueche follows a man’s mental disintegration.

The Passion - Jeanette Winterson
Winterson’s rarified world is rampant with the fantastic (a web-footed woman, a man with a telescopic eye, a walk across Russia in “Zero Winter,” etc.). Though emotions are supposedly of primary importance, they’re presented in a fragmented and cryptic way; the dots don’t connect. Anyway, I need characters to be human for me to care about them, and even the the female character at the center of the novel is an extravagant concoction. What insights could Winterson offer me? – just that she’s self-indulgent and pretentious (complete with a precious, aren’t-I-wonderful prose style). And she can be awfully gross and cruel at times – another aspect of her profligate imagination.