Re-reads

Hotel Splendide – Ludwig Bemelmans

When Bemelmans immigrated to the United States he got a job at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel as a busboy, and, over the years, worked his way up to the position of assistant banquet manager. In these stories he doesn’t write about himself, but of the other employees, such as (to select a few) Mespoulets, the hopelessly incompetent waiter who is steadily demoted to lower and lower positions; Kalakobe, the only Negro employed at the hotel, one with grandiose ambitions; and, looming over everyone, Monsieur Victor, the tyrannical Maître d’. A few portrayals of the wealthy patrons of the restaurant are also included. Some stories are more entertaining than others, but overall this book has charm, and the capacity to make you feel good. It’s often amusing, and even when it addresses situations that could be seen as tragic, it’s done with a light touch. There’s one story in which a character quotes from a book describing the grotesque gustatory extravagances of decadent Rome, and this can be seen as a critique of the opulence of the Ritz-Carlton. But, really, Bemelmans has no ax to grind. In the attitude toward life displayed, I would think he was happy man (which is what he may have become), so I was surprised to find that his early years in Europe were very grim. He first found success as an illustrator (each chapter in Splendide begins with one of his line drawings); later fame and fortune came to him as the author of the Madeline series of children’s books. I was familiar with some stories because I used them when teaching reading in Junior High decades ago. The final one is “The Murderer of the Splendide.” I remembered exactly how it would end: with a surprise twist, and a mystery which we know the answer to. 4

Laughter in the Dark – Vladimir Nabokov (Russian)

Nabokov had a cruel streak (or, at least, cruelty is a factor in many of his novels, including Lolita). In Laughter he seems to enjoy presenting the exploitation and destruction of Albinus; there’s no trace of pity for the victim. This is mid-career Nabokov; he wrote it when he was in his early thirties. It seems conceived as a book that would bring in some cash. The prose is good, and at times inventive, but not finely honed as much of his other work. And the characters are one-dimensional. The rationale for Albinus’s obsession with sixteen -year-old Margot is not developed; we’re asked to accept that he finds her irresistibly attractive in a sexual way, and he gives up wife and child to have her. He’s merely a dupe. As for Margot, she’s a hard-boiled manipulator; though her feelings for Albinus are aversion and contempt, he’s rich and she wants to get as much as possible from him. She does love (or lust after) a man named Rex, who enters the picture at the halfway point. Rex ups the ante of heartlessness; he’s a full-fledged sadist who derives delight from Albinus’s suffering. What we have here is a lurid and even repellent tale: we watch as poor Albinus is completely destroyed (before his violent death he’s rendered blind). At the end Margot and Rex are the winners. As a potboiler, the book succeeds. It serves up a readable excursion into aberrant emotions. 3

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog – Dylan Thomas

The Welsh writer (primarily a poet) wrote these autobiographical sketches when he was in his twenties. Why he chose to use a title similar to James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is a mystery. Maybe his aim was to signal his lack of pretention. Or maybe it was an effort to attract readers (which he failed to do). At any rate, I call these sketches rather than stories because they have no plot. Just scenes. The prose is the big thing here – the poet comes out in clusters of impressions. I’m not the ideal audience for this sort of thing (at least, not now; I may have been in the past). That said, I did appreciate it. It’s constructed chronologically; that is, the first sketch – “The Peaches” (my favorite of the lot) – takes place when Dylan is a very young boy, and the last when he’s on the verge of adulthood. The setting is Swansea in South Wales, a place filled with colorful characters who engage in rollicking dialogue. A lot of this comes alive in a swarming way. The last two sketches are drenched in alcohol – which would be the author’s  lifelong nemesis – and they aren’t presented as positive experiences. Pervading them is a sense of loneliness, of an unfulfilled need of a woman’s love. Here’s part of the book’s closing sentence, which encapsulates what Thomas set out to give us in this portrait of the place which formed him: . . . “the small and hardly known and never-to-be-forgotten people of the dirty town had lived and loved and died and, always, lost.” 4

The Connoisseur – Evan S. Connell

Prior to starting this review, I looked up as much as I could find on the enigmatic Mr. Connell. One thing I already knew was that he was a collector of pre-Columbian art, which is what his character in this novel becomes. Muhlbach is on a business trip in New Mexico (his home is New York), and happens to come across a terra cotta statuette in a Taos shop. The opening sentence: “Unspeakable dignity isolates the diminutive nobleman.” Thus begins what amounts to an obsession. Though Muhlbach has two children (his wife is deceased) they are given almost no attention. They could easily not exist, and Muhlbach could be, like the author, a lifelong bachelor without children. I think Connell included them to show how insignificant he considered them to be. What matters to Muhlbach (and to Connell) are the objects he’s obsessed with. We get long scenes – at a university’s anthropology department, at a motel auction, at a high-scale Greenwich Village shop, at a knick-knack store called Charlotte’s Curiosity Corner. Though Muhlbach remains somewhat monochromatic, the characters he meets are lively creations. A lot of technical territory is covered as Muhlbach learns the intricacies of collecting authentic pieces – for much is fake, expertly done. Muhlbach finds it peculiar that when he discovers that a piece is not truly pre-Columbian, no matter how much he was first attracted to it, it immediately becomes of little worth in his eyes. Does all this sound boring to you? Odd? Yes, it’s an odd novel, but, for me, in Connell’s hands, fascinating. The scenes are done with expertise. The prose is lovely in its flowing simplicity. It’s an artfully rendered work. 5

Re-reads

Life in the Crystal Palace – Alan Harrington

This is a study of a corporation. An ideal corporation, but, for Harrington (who worked in Public Relations), not a good fit; he was by nature a rebel caught in a labyrinth of benevolent conformity. So he’s critical of the Crystal Palace, though not in an angry, spiteful way. His approach is analytical, and it’s complete – he leaves no stone unturned. Which made for slow going. I was often uninterested, detached. Maybe, when I first read the book, I was employed in a big corporation, or had recently left one. So the book had relevance. Now it lacks that, and is basically a sociological study, so it does not belong on a list of Most Meaningful Books. 2 (delete)

The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne – Brian Moore

This is an angry book, and Moore goes on attack in a brutal fashion. No subtleties or niceties here; even the prose is as blunt as a club. He doesn’t spare poor Judith Hearne, the spinster of meager means who, on the first page, moves into a new boarding house. She isn’t portrayed with much sympathy: she’s not very intelligent or insightful and has many minor faults (such as an unwarranted snobbishness). Yet she’s a desperate soul – desperate for love or friendship; she feels herself at the dead end of a life of emotional deprivation, and can’t accept it. Most of those around her are specimens of humanity at its worst – meanness and cruelty and greed are prevalent. The plot centers on Judith’s hopes for a relationship with a man; not the man of her dreams – far from it – but a man anyway, someone who will care for her, care about her. This dream is, of course, shattered. Then, halfway through the book, Judith’s severe drinking problem is introduced. I didn’t quite buy this, especially since we never see her in her wild intoxicated state; I think Moore was using the alcoholism as a means to hurry his character to her end – an end in which she loses even her religious beliefs. Yet, I must say, at that end, on the last page, when Judy (she liked to be called Judy) is in a nursing home (where she will stay), and she begins to gather the few of her precious life possessions around her, I was truly moved. Yes, we try to carry on. Moore’s anger is at the injustice of life, though he also shows his deep enmity for the Catholic religion and the city of Belfast, which is portrayed as a woefully dismal place. A few notes: The original title was simply Judith Hearne, and the book was turned down by ten (some sources say twelve) publishers before it found a home. 4

Mrs. Bridge – Evan S. Connell

The novel is composed of what I’ll call “snapshots” (117 of them).They are often less then a page long, seldom over two, and all have titles (Good-by Alice, Tea Leaves). These snapshots present scenes – of a quiet nature – that cover the life of Mrs. Bridge from early marriage to elderly widowhood. She has all the things that Judith Hearne desired: a husband, three children, a beautiful house (the Bridges are part of the affluent Country Club set in Kansas City). Yet the husband is a workaholic who’s at his office most of the time, and when he’s home there seems to be no relationship between them; he’s tired, taciturn by nature, and is not the type to discuss feelings. As for the children, two of them turn away from her at a very young age. Why? She loves them and is a dutiful mother. Perhaps there’s one thing about her that they rebel against: her beliefs are conventional; she gently disapproves of anything they do that falls outside of propriety. This is, in fact, the one characteristic about Mrs. Bridge that stands out. Propriety rules her life: she never deviates in her thinking from anything that is not “proper.” She also has too much empty time on her hands, with a live-in cook/waitress/maid and a weekly laundress. Though she sometimes thinks of expanding her horizons – reading a good book or attending a class – all these ideas quickly die on the vine. But Connell has not written a harsh portrayal of a woman who is, as he’s stated, based on his own mother. She doesn’t deserve harshness: she hasn’t a mean bone in her body. And, as time goes by, a fleeting darkness begins to pervade her thinking. She considers her life in which each empty day proceeded like the one before. But she cannot change; that same life moves on and on, and there comes a time when moments of depression and even panic set in, a feeling that she is unloved and unwanted. All is not well in her tidy little world. I felt, despite Mrs. Bridge’s limitations, that the people around her – husband and children – failed her. What came across for me in this portrait was a sense of guilt and regret – embedded there by the author. For the son in the novel is one of those who failed her. This is a fine novel, highly readable and artfully done. 5

Mr. Bridge – Evan S. Connell

Strange. In all my other re-reads I recognized that I had been there before. Often I could remember the endings (in the case of Judith Hearne I knew her shoes would appear on the last page “with the little buttons, winking up at her”). But with Mr. Bridge I recognized nothing. Yet I had it listed as one of my Most Meaningful Books, and I had it in my bookcase. My conclusion is that either it never made any impression or, more likely, I had never read it – it’s on the list solely as a companion piece to Mrs. I plowed my way though most of it before calling it quits. It uses the same format as the preceding book, but is much longer. The snapshots are repetitive in presenting character; we keep getting slight variations on the man’s feelings, words and actions (all ultra-conservative). To be fair, it’s a thorough portrait of Mr. Bridge. But I found him to be a bore, nor did I like him. And whereas Mrs. was artfully done, this was a plodding piece of writing (which is, actually, in keeping with the character’s personality). In it Mrs. is merely an insipid presence and the obnoxious son is given far too much attention. Connell wrote this book ten years after Mrs. (which was his first novel). Maybe he felt he needed to complete the family portrait. Maybe he was searching for something to write. But the creative spark wasn’t there – a sad decline by a writer who always had a struggle producing fiction. And sad too because it serves to detract from its predecessor. 2 (delete)

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Mr. Darcy was a problem for me, one that never went away. For most of the book Austen presents him as a man whose sense of superiority is such that he has open disdain for those who don’t meet his lofty standards. He’s also a meddler; he uses every resource to separate his friend from a woman who he, Darcy, considers an inappropriate match. Since he displays little feeling for Elizabeth, when his proposal of marriage comes it’s a surprise (her “astonishment was beyond expression”); she rejects him and catalogues her reasons for actively disliking him. Yet they will marry, and this is due to nothing short of a metamorphosis in Darcy. Suddenly he engages in all sorts of kind, generous acts. We’re to take this as an indication of his feelings for Elizabeth, but to me it wasn’t Darcy doing these things; it was Austen stacking the deck in his favor. Does she succeed at making the two credible as lovers? I saw no warmth on either side. Darcy remains wooden, and though the same cannot be said of Elizabeth, her most passionate moment takes place when she first sees his estate; the splendor of the house and grounds is such that she feels “to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!” When her sister asks her how long she has loved Darcy, she answers, “I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.” Her mother is enraptured by the marriage: “Oh! my sweetest Lizzie! how rich and how great you will be!” Her sentiments are not just those of a small-minded and greedy woman. In the society of the idle rich depicted in this book (no main character does a lick of work) people maneuver to be in the good graces of those who rank higher in wealth and status. The two worst toadies – Elizabeth’s mother and the fatuous Mr. Collins – are one-dimensional objects of Austen’s ridicule and disdain. Yet Elizabeth’s friend marries Mr. Collins for the financial security he can provide. And Elizabeth? After her marriage she plans to protect Darcy from the “mortification” of having to interact with “vulgar” people. She “looked forward with delight to the time when they should be removed from society so little pleasing to either, to all the comfort and elegance of their family party at Pemberley.”

Growing Up - Russell Baker
For half the book Baker focuses not on himself but on his family. His father dies at the onset of the Great Depression, and he and his mother are forced to live with various uncles and aunts. The child/young boy’s growing up is depicted in terms of a growth in his understanding of the people around him. Though his indomitable but thwarted mother is the most vivid character, others – such as the hugely generous Uncle Allen and Aunt Pat – are strong presences. Then there’s Oluf, who carried on a courtship with Russell’s mother. In letters he wrote to her we see this lively, enterprising, optimistic man being broken in his struggle to find work. He ends his correspondence with Elizabeth (and disappears from her life) with the words “I am lost and going and not interested in anything anymore.” Baker’s use of these excerpts show him at his unobtrusive best. Unfortunately, the book weakens as he reaches his mid-teens and takes center stage. Teenagers and young men are not very likable creatures, nor are their crises of much interest. Baker assumes an attitude of humorous indulgence (in the case of his difficulty in losing his virginity, he portrays himself as a fumbling rube). But it’s a lumbering type of humor, and the prose – which once could deftly evoke emotions – is no more than what would be expected of a competent journalist.

The Patriot - Evan S. Connell
In The Patriot Connell proves himself adept at writing a long, straightforward novel. One of his major accomplishments is to make clear what a life-altering experience military service is, and why so many veterans hold dear the memory of their war years and the relationships they formed during that time. The most important person for Melvin Isaacs is swaggering Sam Horne, who takes Melvin under his wing. Melvin’s name is one indication that this is an autobiographical work: with the change of a vowel and the omission of two consonants we get Evan. Melvin is presented as a fragmented person in whom the parts do not function together. He’s alive and real, but, like the perplexed Horne, we’re constantly asking, “Why the hell did you do that?” Embedded in the mostly realistic narrative are scenes that skew into the surreal. Melvin has a nightmarish interview with a Lieutenant Caravaggio, who is either insane or has some unfathomable agenda. In a doomed flight in a dilapidated plane, during which Melvin announces to the tower that he’s The Green Hornet, he seems insane. Throughout the novel there’s an underlying disjointedness, but when it moves into civilian life it becomes a shambles as Connell unsympathetically assigns Melvin to various roles (college student, abstract artist, husband). But even in this last section I never lost interest, and the final scene, with the father urgently talking about how to survive a nuclear attack, again shows how forceful and original a writer Connell can be. The Patriot should ultimately be judged by the ways it succeeds, because those successes are so distinctive. In the descriptions of flight we get it all: the smell of oil, the coughing, barking engine as the plane labors upward; then a bleak and gaseous silence, the miniature world as seen from the solarium of the cockpit. And there’s a seemingly innocuous visit to a Confederate museum in which an old lady who smells of vinegar and beer and has a bath towel around her head (“Washin’ my hair, men”) gives a tour of a house where a horrific battle had been fought. She closes her four page monologue by asking her guests to look down a stairwell where the bloodstains are still “as dark as midnight, men, and fearsome as ever.” *

Mary - Vladimir Nabokov (Russian)
This short novel, Nabokov’s first, was written when he was twenty-six years old and newly-married. It displays more of his flaws than his virtues. Ganin had a brief love affair with Mary; Nabokov tries to evoke their love through Ganin’s memories, but the young man is unappealing and Mary (who exists entirely offstage) never comes to life. I cared more about the old poet and the lonely young woman who live in Ganin’s rooming house. At the end an improbable coincidence is to reunite the lovers after a five year separation. The plan is for Ganin to meet Mary at the railroad station and whisk her away from her repugnant husband. But, on the final page, he abruptly decides that she should remain as no more than a memory, and he heads for another railroad station to make his getaway. Recently I started The Real Life of Sebastian Knight (written fifteen years after Mary) but didn’t read enough to do a review. In both novels Nabokov tried to capture elusive emotional states and to describe the inanimate world in fresh ways. He believed that the magic of his prose and perceptions could carry the day. He was mistaken. He needed vital characters in compelling situations. He needed Humbert craving Lolita.

Saint Augustine’s Pigeon - Evan S. Connell
In reviewing Connell’s Double Honeymoon I called it “a terrible mistake from an author I greatly admire.” His books that I admire are Mrs. Bridge, Mr. Bridge, Son of the Morning Star, Diary of a Rapist and The Connoisseur. They need to be duly noted, because this collection of selected stories includes many terrible mistakes. There are only two full-fledged successes. In the four page long “The Marine” a pilot who had not yet left the United States asks an injured Captain what it was like on the front lines. In the ensuing monologue we get a harrowing look at how war allows a warped person to indulge his grisly urges. The other success is an essay on the subject of celebrity (with “numerous digressions”); it was a pleasure to accompany Connell as he lets his thoughts meander along labyrinthine paths. As for the rest of the book, there are many short pieces, some interesting, some a waste. What baffled me are the five long stories. Two are about a character named J.D., a man who roams the world; he occasionally returns to tell his stay-at-home school friends of the wondrous things he has seen and experienced (including love affairs with exotic women). J.D. came across as one of Walter Mitty’s more foolish incarnations. Then there are three very long stories featuring a character named Karl Muhlbach. In struggling through them my wandering attention was caught by a line describing a telephone conversation: “. . . it goes on and on, a long, dreary, stupid, inconclusive affair.” These words accurately described the story I was reading. All the characters – not only Muhlbach, though he’s the worst of the lot – could be aliens from the planet Boffo. How could Connell get Mr. and Mrs. Bridge so right and then show no understanding of human nature (nor any inkling of how to tell an engrossing story)? The answer must lie in the psyche of the author. With the Bridges Connell captured stages of their lives in precise images, but he did it from a distance, as an observer. Though the images are artfully created and arranged, his scrupulous intelligence was the main factor at work. Connell used Muhlbach as his main character in two novels (which in itself is perplexing). The Connoisseur was successful because it focused on Karl’s obsession with pre-Columbian art; Double Honeymoon failed because it was about a sexual relationship. Connell was at a loss when presenting intimate feelings from a firsthand perspective. He needed to work from a place of detachment, either in the subject matter or the way the story was framed. A look at the body of his work – much of which is nonfiction – suggests that he was aware of this limitation.

The Nightingale - Sholom Aleichem (Yiddish) 
In a simple, direct way Aleichem brings to turbulent life the exotic world of a Jewish shtetl, with its foul-smelling mud streets and small, dark houses. There are no pogroms or raids by Cossacks in this novel; the troubles that befall the Jews of Mazepevka come from poverty and the human flaws that their all-pervasive religion cannot eradicate. Love, kindness and generosity are present, but there’s also greed, backbiting, jealousy, and various other destructive feelings and behavior. We’re not in the uplifting world of “Fiddler on the Roof.” But no group of people, if depicted honestly, would emerge pure as the driven snow. Aleichem is honest, and for this he should be commended. He does seem to be denouncing the Jewish practice of arranging marriages. Esther, who embodies the virtues of kindness and generosity, is pressured by her family to marry a detestable – though wealthy – widower. I felt how odious this marriage would be for her. Especially since she loves Yosele, has loved him since they were children. Yosele is the cantor’s son, the nightingale of the title; he can sing with an exquisite sweetness. Though he reciprocates Esther’s love, this is no love story. The fault lies entirely with Yosele. He doesn’t appear to be a complex character, but, near the end of the book, when one looks back, trying to account for his actions, it becomes clear that Yosele has always been mentally unstable. Early on his emotionality seemed part of an imaginative, creative nature; but it darkens. When he returns to Mazepevka, just as Esther is about to marry the widower, we’re presented not with a lover come to rescue her but with a madman. I was surprised at how unobtrusively Aleichem leaves us with nothing. The last words in the novel, before the withering epilogue, come from the coachman: “If you think about it, you come to realize it’s a rotten world.” * 

Therese Raquin - Emile Zola (French) 
Zola wrote this when he was in his mid-twenties, and if I were advising him I would have recommended that he abandon the idea of being a novelist and take up shoemaking. Of course, that would be bad advice, but this is a bad novel. It’s strident and overwrought, both in how the characters carry on and in the prose. Zola may have felt that by presenting a gloomy, grim, ugly world – and doing it unrelentingly – he was being a realist; but the people in this book are too extreme to be real. Zola assaults the reader with a torrent of shrill adjectives; he was obviously writing in a frenzy, carried away by his story of illicit passion, murder and guilt. There’s no artistry, no thoughtful restraint, and the results are as melodramatic as a dime novel. At the time it came out in France its luridness made it a cause celebre. I stuck with it to the halfway point, hoping it might get better, but it just kept getting worse. 

A Long Desire - Evan Connell 
The eleven pieces in this book are about people who embarked on obsessive searches. Most desired wealth (though prestige comes a close second); six of the quests involve discovering a passage to India or finding riches in the New World. The lure of gold can drive man to endure appalling hardships and to commit atrocious acts. The majority of the searchers fail to reach their goals, and the outcome for many is a gory death. I was struck by their determination, brutality, resourcefulness. Also, their gullibility. My gut reaction was often, What folly, what madness! There are boring stretches in which Connell simply presents researched facts; when he enlivens the facts with a novelist’s flare the results are engrossing and even fascinating. My favorite episode was about the crazed search for El Dorado. My favorite character (and, I believe, Connell’s) is the only woman: Mary Kingsley, a proper Victorian lady with an insatiable desire to explore remote places. She wasn’t after gold; she just wanted adventure. Nothing fazed her – she remained unflappable in the face of cannibals and crocodiles. And she always observed tea time.

Captain Maximus - Barry Hannah

My problem with this story collection is that Hannah intentionally creates the impression that his larger-than-life characters are stand-ins for him. The glossy photograph that fills the entire back of the dust jacket shows Hannah astride a motorcycle, wearing black – the whole package, including grimy hands. This outlaw biker clearly has contempt for the sheltered world, but a look at Hannah’s resume (which I did after I read the book) reveals that he spent most of his life in academia, either as a student or teacher. I found the purported likeness the author establishes between himself and his renegade characters to be an annoying conceit. The book itself is something of a scam. It’s only 101 pages long (with wide margins, big print, etc.) and forty of those pages are devoted to a screenplay that’s nothing more than filler. In other words, here’s a “collection” that isn’t one. I can’t say what’s going on with Hannah; maybe he’s a prankster. What I can say for sure – despite all the reservations I’ve brought up – is that Captain Maximus contains a gothic masterpiece. In “Ride, Fly, Penetrate, Loiter” man’s darkest side is unleashed and runs amok. This wild and fierce story is the real thing.

The Stories of Denton Welch - Denton Welch
I read about half. Maybe I missed an excellent story or two – and I do think Welch was capable of writing them. But the majority were just good, and I reached the point where they started to take on a sameness: a vivid moment in time, involving bizarre characters, with a vague conclusion. Mood pieces done with sensitivity – and that’s it.

Tour of the Hebrides - James Boswell
Johnson Lite. I found him an interesting character and liked to read what he said, but there was too much extraneous matter – people, places, events duly recorded. If, in this book, Boswell learned what to do and what not to do, its chief virtue would be as a precursor to his great Life of Samuel Johnson.

Double Honeymoon - Evan Connell
A terrible mistake from an author I greatly respect. It’s about a sick and sordid relationship. The girl is crazy, in every bad and dangerous sense of that word, and Karl, infatuated with her, comes across as a fool. How Connell could have strayed so far from excellence is a mystery to me.

The Crofter and the Laird - John McPhee
An okay book. I finished it only because it was short. McPhee isn’t interested enough in people to hold my attention. The Scottish characters don’t come alive. His wife and four daughters, though with him, could be in Cleveland. In fact, the author himself never emerges as a person. Sometimes he just recites facts.

The Diary of a Rapist - Evan Connell
The problem for a novel told entirely in diary form lies in its limitations. It’s difficult to have a plot, to create scenes, even to have secondary characters of much substance. All these problems exist in this book, the most glaring of which is that the wife is unconvincing. The only thing an author can do forcibly in this format is enter one person’s mind. This Connell does. It’s grueling, because the mind we go into is a sick one (actually, an unhappy one, to a terrible degree); we emerge somewhere far from where we expected. All the faults and weaknesses of Earl Summerfield are swept aside. In the ending he achieves a form of redemption – the only kind allowed to him. Disregard the lurid title; it’s misleading. *

The Savage State - Georges Conchon (French)
The tone of this book, set in Africa, is unusual, and it took me a long while to feel comfortable with it. There’s a burlesque quality to the writing. But the events themselves are not comic – they’re horrible. Also, everything that happens is accompanied by a commentary as to how someone feels about it. This slows down the action; the author insists that you think about what’s going on. By the end, I felt that these authorial choices were valid, though they didn’t make for an engaging reading experience.

Oh! - Mary Robison
Pointillistic fiction, each colorful dot adding up to a whole. Plotwise, nothing much happens – the characters kind of meander about, talking a lot. However, by an accretion of dots, we get to see these people quite well. What would be fatal to this type of aimless fiction is if you didn’t want to be with the characters. But I definitely liked and cared about them. I enjoyed their deadpan humor. This book has a sparkle, a loose and jaunty feel, and it presents life from a fresh perspective. *

October Island - William March
The prose is transparent in its intentions: clarity and smoothness. The characters also seem simple and their motivations clear. When March reveals something misshapen under their surfaces, it’s done with the same simplicity; the effect is unsettling. The plot of the book is quite well-suited for presenting the “truths” that March intends to undermine. An elderly Christian couple, missionaries, come to an island to convert the pagan natives, but unexpected events leave them reduced to their human essentials. The author intertwines a look at religious belief with selfishness, loneliness and longing. Theme and the telling are meshed perfectly. William March is an author who deserves to still be read; if not this novel, try The Bad Seed or Company K. *