Orley Farm – Anthony Trollope
This novel was published in two volumes, so I’m going to read (and review) the two separately. And I surely will read the next volume, as I’m interested in how things turn out. A trial is to take place determining whether Mrs. Mason forged the signatures of her husband and two witnesses on a codicil to a will, one which left her infant son the heir to Orley Farm. At the time, twenty years ago, her husband’s well-to-do adult son had taken the matter to court, contesting the validity of the codicil; the decision went against him, yet he remained convinced that he had been cheated out of property that was rightfully his. When new papers are discovered, giving credence to his belief, he revives the case; if a wrong has been done to him, however long ago, he’ll exact his full pound of flesh. For me, Mrs. Mason’s guilt or innocence is not in question: she forged the codicil. Still, how will she survive the retrial? Trollope is adept at putting characters in moral/emotional vises, and then tightening the screws. The crosscurrents that play over relationships are deviously constructed but entirely sound, given the characters’ psychology and temperament. Another Trollope strength is his portrayal of people who are unpleasant, deviant or evil. I’ll note two of many compelling creations: the lawyer Mr. Dockwrath, a coarse, wily brute force, and the elder son’s wife, a miser of psychotic proportions. But a Trollope weakness is also on display: some characters come across as simplistic and cloying (this is most evident in his depictions of womanly virtue). It all has to do with his attitude: when Trollope was hard he was as good as it gets, but when he was soft he turns mushy. Orley Farm also suffers in that it’s cluttered with too many characters and lines of plot (such as the love triangles involving a handful of young people). But readers in 1862 were desirous of a blockbuster, so Trollope, the human word machine, added the necessary padding. His readiness to produce on demand was an aspect of his work that critics would attack. Where’s the divine inspiration, they asked.

The Final Deduction – Rex Stout
Again I turn to Stout for a diversion. Archie gets a lot of play, which is good (when he glances into a wealthy client’s bedroom he decides it “would suit my wife fine if I ever had a wife, which I probably wouldn’t because she would probably want that type of room”). But this is a sloppily written and plotted novel; Stout wasn’t half trying. In fact, I think he was deliberately seeing how much nonsense he could foist off on his readers. The overly intricate maneuvering of the kidnapping is topped for preposterousness by the method of committing a murder. The Teddler library has a dozen life-sized bronze statues of figures from American history. A drugged man is dragged under the statue of Ben Franklin, which is then pushed over so that it falls on him. But how could someone be sure that a statue of that size and weight would land on the unconscious victim in a way that would cause death (and not just, say, crush his legs)? A little off to the side and the whole plan would be a fiasco. Of course, if the Ben Franklin had missed completely, the murderer could drag the body to the George Washington statue for another try. I often complain about how writers of detective fiction deliberately try to mislead the reader. So this time out, when the five suspects were identified, I chose the most unlikely person to be the murderer. It turns out that I was right. So now I can solve mysteries just like Nero Wolfe.

The Hat of My Mother – Max Steele
I admired Steele’s only novel so much that I got this collection of his short stories. But only “When She Brushed Her Hair” approached the excellence of Debby. And even that story is marred by an awkward introduction and a postscript in which Steele muses about the project. There’s one other piece that’s very good — “The Cat and the Coffee Drinkers” — but the rest range from interesting to mistakes. Since their publication dates begin when the author was thirty-one and end when he was sixty-six, which was his age when the collection came out, it’s a summing up of his work as a writer of short fiction. There’s simply not much of value in this slim volume (under two hundred pages), and I was left wondering how Steele could have written something as good – and ambitious – as Debby. Maybe the novel was so heartfelt that it elicited the best in him, and his best was better than what he was normally capable of. And he wrote it when he was in his twenties; he would attend five universities, ending up as the longtime director of the creative writing program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; possibly academic affairs took up his time and energy. In most of the stories he uses personal experiences for subject matter; this works as long as he stays in the background. In the two successes I noted, one is about his mother and the other is about his kindergarten teacher; in the first he isn’t born yet, and in the second he’s just one of the anonymous boys in Miss Effie’s class. But too often I felt I was in a psychiatric session in which Steele reveals his inability to sustain romantic relationships (in “Color the Daydream,” which is about a love affair that turns out badly, there’s a paragraph that consists of two words: “Torture time”). This collection left me with a feeling of sadness. The stories weren’t as good as I wanted them to be, and Max Steele seemed to have had a struggle with life.

Finding a Girl in America – Andre Dubus
Girls are easy to find for Hank Allison, professor at an upscale university; they’re sitting in his classroom, waiting to be plucked. In the title story, I lost count of them. I also lost respect for Dubus. If you’re an author and professor of literature, you can’t have a protagonist who’s an author and professor of literature and not expect the reader to see the work as autobiographical. I passed judgment on an individual who has affairs with girls fifteen years his junior. Dubus added to my alienation by subjecting me to smarmy sex scenes with all the thrusting details. I had started this collection in a positive frame of mind; I liked Dubus’s one novel, The Lieutenant. But the first four stories (before I got to “Girl”) were flawed by the author’s presence; I felt him showing off his all-embracing sensitivity. In two stories empathy is extended to killers. Here’s one contemplating his victim: “He felt her spirit everywhere, fog-like across the pond and the bridge, spreading and rising in silent weeping above him into the black visible night and the invisible space beyond his ken and the cold silver truth of the stars.” This excerpt is an example of panting prose; Dubus wants the reader to think, “God, that man can write!” But back to “Girl.” Dubus ennobles the affairs: they move Hank from “a need not only to give her more of what attracted her in the classroom” to his “passion to know all of her.” For sexual gratification he can’t turn to the women in the town who “thought Chekhov was something boys did in their beds at night.” He needs someone who, like him, loves literature. Needs: Hank has a lot of needs to fill; it’s a burden that can do a lot of damage to someone vulnerable. Most of the coeds he beds are far from paragons of virtue; if they’re budding writers they probably see sleeping with their published prof as a chance to advance their careers. But at the end of the story he has found his true love in Lori, who’s relatively innocent. I fear for the Loris who unwisely stray into the orbit of his neediness.

A Question of Upbringing – Anthony Powell
The burden this novel carries is that it’s the first of a nine volume undertaking called A Dance to the Music of Time. I couldn’t help wondering, “Do I want to spend a good part of my life reading about these people?” The answer, which came to me on page 150, was that I just wasn’t interested enough. Part of the problem is that the narrator is looking back at events that occurred in his late teens, and his older self exhibits little emotion; even when the word “love” is used it’s without animation. Not helping matters is the stately prose: “The fact that an incisive step of one sort or another had been taken by him in relation to Lady McReith was almost equally well revealed by something in the air when they spoke to each other: some definite affirmation which made matters, in any case, explicit enough.” It’s as if the author was writing while dressed in suit and tie (and maybe spats). This excerpt also illustrates Powell’s quirky use of the colon. Was he trying to set a world record? As an experiment, I just opened the book five times, at random, and every page had one or more colons. The fact that I was noticing punctuation is a bad sign. But I’m being hard on a work that deserves respect. Though it wasn’t my cup of tea, I realize that Powell’s opus would be a treat for others. They could snuggle down by the fireplace for a good long read; they could enjoy Powell’s intelligence and sly humor; they could follow his handful of characters until, I suppose, they become doddering old men. Enjoy away!

Too Many Clients – Rex Stout
This was written late in Stout’s career, and it shows an author merely going through the motions. Archie has lost his bounce, and the many women characters are hum-drum. Like Stout, I didn’t exert myself – I read this inattentively. If I had made an effort to solve the mystery I would have resented how Stout pulls a motive for murder out of thin air (Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention . . .). What makes the ending interesting is that Nero Wolfe once again gives the murderer the time and space to commit suicide.

The Jewel in the Crown – Paul Scott
On page one Scott writes “This is the story of a rape . . .” In a broad sense, it’s the story of the Indian struggle for independence, and this hugely complex subject is presented in a way that’s intelligent and fair. But a rape is the focal point from which all else spirals out; this makes the final hundred pages, a journal in which Daphne Manners tells what happened in Bibighar Gardens, essential to the book’s success. It’s here that Scott flounders badly. His first person voice is definitely not that of a young woman. And there’s no reason for Daphne to write an overly-detailed narration of events, which is what Scott has her doing. In her lack of substance she stands in stark contrast to the others who preceded her. The intense feelings she expresses – such as her love for Hari Kumar (unsupported by one scene in which the two share emotional intimacy) – don’t emanate from a real person but come across as words written on the page by an author. An author who was clearly struggling. The dramatic approach Scott had utilized throughout – that of telling his story by delving into the inner lives of a variety of characters – worked brilliantly in the opening chapter. He gets Miss Crane right, as he does many others, only to get the last, crucial person all wrong. Because of this I can’t – as I had planned to do – praise a book that has many virtues. This is especially painful since Scott was clearly aiming for greatness; Jewel is the first installment of a two thousand page epic called The Raj Quartet. In an effort to soften this negative review I’ll close by recommending his last novel – a short, two-character piece called Staying On. In that one he got everything right.

On the Beach – Nevil Shute
This book’s message, regarding the danger of proliferation of nuclear weapons, surely had impact in 1957, but time has lessened the relevance of that issue. What still matters are the dual love stories. The feelings that Peter and Mary Holmes and Dwight Towers and Moira Davidson have for one another are more than credible – they’re meaningful. The novel also has aspects that give it a thought-provoking depth. Sensible, sane people exist on two levels: they accept the fact that they will soon die, but they carry on with plans for the future. Captain Towers buys presents to give to his wife and children, who have long ago perished in the dead zone that is the North American continent; Mary begins planting a garden which she will never see; in the last weeks left to her Moira begins taking a secretarial course. The effect of this oft-repeated dichotomy in the characters’ thinking is to give the so-called “little” things in life their rightful significance. These people are ordinary, decent folks, but – like those little things in life – their decency is elevated so that it’s all-important. Also thought-provoking is Dwight’s refusal to give himself to Moira, which is something she wants with all her heart; he chooses to remain faithful to his wife. He rescued Moira from an alcoholic blur – his influence makes her carry on with dignity – and she appreciates what he has done for her. She also knows that she has meant a lot to him, for he tells her so in a beautiful way. But still . . . She dies alone, with a bottle of brandy as her only companion. Is she the tragic figure in all this? On the Beach is not a sophisticated piece of writing, but my total involvement with four people made it a moving experience. Nevil Shute took the subject of impending death to write a novel about life. *

Please Pass the Guilt – Rex Stout
The first Nero Wolfe mystery I read – Fer-de-lance – was the first one Stout wrote. Guilt was next to last in the series, written when the author was eighty-seven. Though there’s a separation of forty years between the two, this outing has one of the strengths present from the beginning: Archie is still jaunty. My problem concerns the murder Wolfe is trying to solve. Two men are vying for the presidency of a corporation; one keeps a bottle of bourbon in the drawer of his desk. Before a crucial meeting his opponent sneaks into his office with some LSD, planning to spike the bourbon; instead a bomb in the drawer blows up, killing him. All this seems ridiculous. Using LSD to disable a person is a hare-brained idea. And where did the bomb come from? Either the culprit who planted it had expertise in bomb-making (highly unlikely, given the suspects) or he/she purchased it (a tricky proposition). Also, since it would take time to rig a bomb in a drawer, they would need prolonged access to the office of a senior executive. Wolfe’s intelligence is the basis of these mysteries, so to offer up a stupid premise (the problems I’ve cited are never addressed) is to undermine the whole enterprise. I was after a simple diversion, but this didn’t fill the bill. The abrupt ending indicates that Rex Stout had run out of patience and just wanted to be done.

The Perfect Stranger – P. J. Kavanagh
This book is well-written and unabashedly autobiographical, but the author never fully animates himself. It’s interesting that Kavanagh, at the halfway point, interjects a piece he wrote when he was twenty: “I give the story now as I wrote it then, because it is true to how I felt at the time, the disconnectedness.” What follows is an account of a war experience. It’s unreadable, but before I quit I came across sentences like this: “Please God make me a human being.” The author notes that, after this segment, “. . . the rest of the book is the story of a rescue; and you can only measure the size of a rescue if you know how badly it is needed.” We’re to believe that a person who lacks something vital will be transformed. I didn’t buy that, nor did I care; a flat character just isn’t interesting. When I checked Stranger out from the library I thought I was getting a novel by the Kavanagh who wrote Tarry Flynn, which was also autobiographical but was brimming with life. My mistake – two different authors altogether.

The Petty Demon - Fyodor Solugub (Russian)
Initially I took this to be a comic novel because every character and every encounter highlight the absolute worst in human nature; since people aren’t that bad, the results are absurd. Peredonov, the main character, is made up of a plethora of vices, with not one virtue thrown in. Some examples: “Everything that reached his consciousness was transformed into something vile and filthy” and “He had no objects that he loved just as there were no people he loved.” Despite his odiousness, women are in hot pursuit of him as a husband. This sadist (yes, he’s that too) is a schoolteacher in a provincial town, and the haphazard plot revolves around his bumbling machinations to be appointed to the post of inspector. At the midway point the author escalates the level of outrageousness by introducing an androgynous, pubescent boy and having him engage in sex games with a young woman; this comes perilously close to pornography. He also has Peredonov, who from the beginning was paranoid and superstitious, turn into a full-blown maniac. No longer did I find anything comic about this novel; the grimy desolation that pervades it had became dull and monotonous, and I went into skimming mode. From the Introduction I learned that Demon was enormously successful in Russia when it came out in 1907. Some critics credited Sologub with exposing the petty and vicious vulgarity of provincial life, and that, in Peredonov, he was portraying an individual with a spiritual void. I don’t buy this. Without real people, no point about life can be made. This isn’t a novel about moral corruption; rather, it’s a corrupt novel conjured up by a man whose mind works in a peculiar and undisciplined way.

The Quest for Corvo - A. J. A. Symons
In the opening paragraph a friend suggests that Symons read an obscure novel called Hadrian the Seventh by Baron Corvo. Symons is deeply impressed by it and wants to know more about the author. His initial curiosity grows into an obsessive search to get to the heart of an enigma. The result is this “experiment in biography” which, for the most part, takes the form of letters written by Frederick Rolphe (the real name of the deceased “Baron”) and the people who came into contact with him. A shadowy portrait emerges of a man who, despite being gifted with exceptional talents, made a mess of his life. All his relationships ended the same way: with his biting (quite viciously) hands that had reached out to offer him aid; in his letters he constantly rails against the people who failed him. How did they fail him? Symons explores that question in a closing chapter. He believes that “the starting point of (Rolphe’s) complex character is that he was a homosexual in Victorian England,” and as a consequence he was “intolerably conscious of the lack of emotional satisfaction in his life.” Since this need could not be fulfilled, he aspired to become a priest: “Set among those who had voluntarily embraced celibacy, his abnormality became, not a possible vice, but a sign of Vocation.” His first blow was not being accepted for the priesthood (for which he never forgave “the Catholicks”). Denied the fulfillment of any of his desires (one of which was recognition of his artistic talents), he found his strength in hate; Rolphe is one of the great haters in literature. His life ends in the dark byways of Venice, where he became a corrupter of young boys and made money as a procurer for those who had a taste for what he had sampled. This is revealed in letters which he sent to an unknown party, and which come into Symons’s possession. Their contents shock Symons into anger and pity, but he provides no excerpts. Since so much about Rolphe is revealed, why deny us a firsthand account of his descent to the depths? Not that I would take his words as the absolute truth. Rolphe so dramatized himself and his martyrdom that early on I began to suspect him of distorting reality. This could either be for effect or for practical gain; when he describes the appalling hardships he endures due to his impoverished state, I considered the possibility that he was exaggerating in order to milk money from benefactors. These doubts regarding the Baron’s veracity don’t detract from a book about someone who dealt in deception. Nor does it matter that I don’t share Symons’s enthusiasm for Rolphe’s brand of genius; before I read Quest I had started Hadrian but didn’t get far; it was too ornate, too absorbed in the paraphernalia of Catholic ritual. Still, Rolphe is a fascinating character, and two excellent works arose from the ruins of his life: one is Pamela Hansford Johnson’s The Unspeakable Skipton, which is based on his last desperate, decadent days, and the other is this unique biography. By calling it a quest Symons is indicating his personal involvement; he was moved to try to understand his tragically flawed subject, and in doing so he offered him a last, posthumous hand of compassion.

To Be a Villain - Rex Stout
Even Archie seemed a bit out of sorts in this outing. It has too many suspects and a plot built around foolish improbabilities. At the end, with everyone gathered in Wolfe’s office, I didn’t expect (and didn’t get) a resolution that came near to untangling the loose ends, and when the identity of the murderer was revealed all I felt was disappointment. Would someone please tell me which of the many (too many, obviously) mysteries that Stout churned out are worth my time, and which ones are the duds?

Cheating at Canasta - William Trevor
Two stories are excellent: “The Dressmaker’s Daughter” and “Bravado.” Two others are good, but eight are no more than fair. Those aren’t stats to be proud of (even though the fair ones got published in The New Yorker). Trevor is in his eighties; it may be significant that his weakest stories – somber mood pieces that meander around an idea but never develop into anything of substance – deal with the elderly, while the two excellent ones are about people in their teens. In “Bravado” a young girl is attracted to a boy who has a reckless swagger. But does her admiration spur him on to impress her? When his actions have tragic consequences, a moral question arises for her: must she bear part of the responsibility? The fact that we never anticipate this specter of guilt gives it impact. Guilt is also at the core of “The Dressmaker’s Daughter.” The capacity to feel guilt can be redeeming, but often it’s a burden one must live with – somehow. In these two stories – in which Trevor is at his best – an emotion lingers on long after the final word.

The Girls of Slender Means - Muriel Spark
I almost abandoned this novel thirty pages from the end. It struck me as a thin enterprise in every way. The disjointed snippets seem carelessly patched together, and Spark’s attitude toward her characters is cold, even disdainful. Of the girls living in the May of Tech Club (just after WW II), three stand out. Selina is a sexually adventurous beauty, Jane does what she calls “brain work,” Joanna gives elocution lessons in which she recites poetry and has her students recite it back (the book contains long stretches of poetry and psalms, which the other-worldly Joanna knows by heart). Only Nicholas Farrington interested me (his death is announced on page four, though he appears, quite alive, from start to finish). For him the girls of slender means embody some ideal of young womanhood; his longing for the ineffable kept me reading, and those last thirty pages (which I almost skipped) added dimension to the novel. A bomb – a remnant of the war – goes off in the garden of the Club, starting a fire that traps some girls on the top floor. Nicholas tries, with the firemen, to rescue them; he’s acquainted with the roof of the adjoining building, for he’s been sleeping there with Selina. All the girls escape – except one. We know that Nicholas will, in the indeterminate future, be killed in Haiti, where he was a religious missionary; what caused him to take that path in life is never explained, but it seems somehow connected with the death at the Club. On the last page, in an evocative passage, he gazes at a May of Tech girl as she pins up her hair – an image he will recall “years later, in the country of his death.”

Murder by the Book - Rex Stout
It’s hit or miss with Stout, and this is a solid single. Archie takes center stage, the cast of suspects is manageable, and when Nero Wolfe unveils the identity of the murderer it made sense. I missed an inconsistency that Wolfe spotted, and felt my inadequacy as a private eye. The fact that three people are murdered for an inconsequential reason is no huge deal; Stout isn’t trying to be Dostoevski. The writing – Archie’s voice – is snappy and bright: “She was the kind you look at and think she should take off just one or two pounds, and then you ask where from and end by voting for the status quo.”

The Name of the World - Denis Johnson
Beware of novels with titles like this one. The first-person narrator has a lot of Zen-like thoughts but no vitality. He sleepwalks through a series of episodes that lead nowhere. When we learn that he’s actually mute with grief (his wife and daughter had been killed in a car accident) I didn’t respond because nothing about the guy rang true, including this tragedy. Then, while at the art department of the university where he teaches, Mike blunders onto a “Cannon Performance”: students are watching a young woman “engaged in shaving her lathered mons veneris.” Her name is Flower Cannon. Mike is roused out of his dormancy; he’s even inspired to this lofty thought: he would have loved for his daughter, if she had lived, to have turned out to be like Flower. The plot is headed toward a relationship between the two (Flower pops up wherever Mike goes), but I wanted no part of the impending nonsense, so I bailed out on page 62, which was the halfway point. I hope that my description of the Cannon Performance hasn’t misled you. Even with the sex thrown in, this book is as drab as an old brown suit.

Death in Summer - William Trevor
A third of the way through this novel a shift in emphasis occurs. The key figure in this evolution is Albert, an apparently insignificant young man whose job is to scrub graffiti off subway walls. He first appears as he listens to Pettie, a girl he came to know when they were in the same orphanage. Albert is worried, for he sees signs of distorted thinking on Pettie’s part. She’s been turned down for a job as live-in nanny for a baby whose mother was killed in a road accident. It’s the mother-in-law’s fault, Pettie believes; Thaddeus, the father of the child, wanted her to get the job, they had a bond, Pettie could sense it. . . . Albert tries, gently, to steer her away from this line of thinking. It’s futile; much of what Albert sets out to do is futile. What matters – in the terms Trevor establishes – is that Albert’s goodness makes him someone of major importance. It’s in his nature to worry about people who are life’s lost souls and to act on their behalf. In this novel those who are compassionate take on substance; those who lack that quality are diminished. Mrs Ferry, who at first glance is using an old affair to cadge money from Thaddeus, is not to be dismissed so easily, not when we gain insight into what motivates her. There’s a long section in which we follow Pettie’s thinking; she will kidnap the baby, but she doesn’t do it with malicious intent; her life has been blasted by so much pain that she has found refuge in a world of fantasies. At the end Albert pays a visit to the father. He wants to make Thaddeus understand Pettie, for understanding will lead to forgiveness; it’s important to Albert that the she be forgiven for what she did. There are scads of books aimed at enlightening; but here, in people and situations that are real, is a moving lesson in values. *

Where There’s a Will - Rex Stout
This is the sixth Nero Wolfe mystery I’ve read, and the most disappointing. Too many characters, too complex a plot. Even Wolfe, near the end, admits that he can’t figure out who killed Mr. Hawthorne. If the genius can’t untangle things, how can I feel anything but frustration? Wolfe does wind up solving the case, but the clue that opens the door is gratuitous, flimsy and involves knowledge that only a botanist could possess. Stout also throws a major red herring into the stew pot: one side of Mrs. Hawthorne’s face has been horribly disfigured by an arrow shot by her husband – presumably an accident – and he dies from a gunshot that rips off half his face. Yet this peculiar coincidence turns out to have no significance. Lastly, due to the large cast of characters, we get little of Archie, who merely runs around a lot, and even less of Nero, who merely asks questions. The first two Wolfe novels I read were good; the next three were not so good; this one was a waste of time. I’ll give Stout one more try.

The Grass Is Singing - Doris Lessing
In this novel a marriage is the seedbed for the unfolding of a horror story. It’s not just that Mary and Dick are mismatched, and that poverty and isolation (they’re poor white farmers in South Africa during the time of apartheid) grind them down. Mary, whose mind we spend the most time in, is mentally ill. “Of course I am ill,” she says in the last chapter. “I’ve been ill ever since I can remember. I am ill here” – and she points to her heart. But this is a brief moment of clarity; on the last day of her life she’s overwhelmed by despair. We know the outcome of the story in the opening pages: Mary is dead, murdered by Moses, the houseboy, and Dick is stark raving mad. What follows is a flashback in which Lessing relates in detail the factors that led to the disintegration of these two people. It’s a serious literary work, well-written and engrossing; but the ending, instead of bringing a sense of completion, raises questions – and doubts. Mary had always felt loathing for blacks and had treated them tyrannically; but in the last chapter, as she waits for Moses to kill her, Lessing suggests that the two have been involved sexually. Since the reader hasn’t been made privy to the development of this relationship, the forces compelling these two people to feel and act as they do are inexplicable. Lessing also suggests that Mary was sexually abused as a child; but why raise that issue at the end? And why all this suggesting? The intensity level of the entire book is pitched very high; but intensity can’t serve as a substitute for perception, and immoderation is always suspect. South Africa, with its debilitating climate and morally bankrupt racial attitudes, comes across as a sort of hell. The only singing on these pages is a wail of lamentation.

Mary Olivier - May Sinclair
Sinclair divided this novel into five books: Infancy, Childhood, Adolescence, Maturity, Middle Age. I liked Mary best as a child, mainly because I believed in her craving for love and her ability to experience a primitive happiness. But there are problems in her family (which slowly emerge for the reader), and they encumber her. She winds up caring for a selfish, narrow-minded mother. Her potential isn’t snuffed out, but it’s not allowed to flourish. She reads a lot of philosophy (abstract speculations about the true meaning of Life take up far too many pages). Her few romantic encounters are brief and chaste. The uneventful days plod along, turning into years. I felt sorry for Mary, but working against my sympathy was the highly stylized prose, in which everything is made to seem so damn meaningful. At the book’s end Sinclair got thoroughly carried away and buries poor Mary under a torrent of overwrought verbiage. Before her death (depicted as a ethereal drifting off) she finds and gives up her soul mate. I no longer cared.

Lolly Willowes - Sylvia Townsend Warner
This would have been a short story if Warner had left out the dawdling. Lolly is appealing, and I found it mildly pleasant to dawdle along with her, though eventually I became restless at the book’s lack of focus. Then things took an abrupt shift, with Lolly rebelling against the circumstances of her life. Up to that point she seemed blandly content; she was happy to stay with her father until he died, and during her years with her brother and sister-in-law and their children we aren’t privy to Lolly’s dissatisfaction. Suddenly she decides to go to a remote place called Great Mop and live (as Laura, the name she prefers) without any responsibilities or ties. Then she becomes a witch. The novel is subtitled The Loving Huntsman, and that’s how Satan is portrayed. No menace, no evil. There’s no talk of her selling her soul (though she surely did). Apparently she’s granted freedom from entanglements, but she was accomplishing that quite well on her own. The scene with the most passion is the conversation between Laura and Satan; she expresses the futility and emptiness of the lives of most women, and why they turn to a huntsman who desires their very souls. After their talk Laura sets out for home; it’s late, and when darkness falls she plans on finding a place to slumber – “a suitable dry ditch or an accommodating loosened haystack.” My reaction was to wonder how the author would like to spend the night in a ditch. I obviously wasn’t won over by the fantastical elements of this novel. Nor did I think Ms. Warner took proper care of her mild and daft creation. This is evident even in the title. Lolly Willowes has a nice ring to it, but Laura associated the name Lolly with her despised role as Aunt Lolly. She wanted to be called Laura.

Champagne for One - Rex Stout
After starting a number of unsuccessful literary novels (most of which I didn’t get far enough into to review) I needed to clean my palate with a Nero Wolfe mystery. Stout removed all embellishment from his prose; we simply get Archie’s voice, and he’s not the arty type. This outing wasn’t as cleverly constructed as others in the series. The premise is intriguing, but it defies a solution. A deus ex machina is needed, and it comes in the form of a fortuitous discovery made by one of Wolfe’s operatives. Another weak point is that the motive for the murder isn’t convincing. Still, as Stout knew, the enjoyment to be had in these mysteries stems from the interaction between Archie and Nero, and that aspect is as satisfying as ever.

The Watchful Gods and Other Stories - Walter Van Tilburg Clark 
The Watchful Gods is a short novel. A boy wakes up on his twelfth birthday; he very much wants a rifle. He gets his wish and immediately goes hunting; after he kills a rabbit he feels remorse. Buck comes across as a normal boy in his interactions with his family and his fantasies about a girl, but he’s quite out of the ordinary. He has a strong spiritual/mystical side; he feels the presence of gods who are directly involved in his life. Some are good, some are malevolent (there’s also an indifferent god presiding over all). And there are sprites – spirits of happiness. By killing the rabbit, Buck believes that he has sided with the malevolent god; he tries to right the wrong he’s committed in an elaborate burial ceremony. Buck’s spirituality is linked to nature, for which he has great affinity; large portions of the novella are made up of descriptions of the natural world. Clark had something to say, but he layered so much onto his character and situation that they got buried under too many words (along with any point he wanted to make). Not helping matters is an indeterminate ending. In the stories Clark also had a larger purpose in mind; most are good, and one unobtrusively rises to greatness. “The Indian Well” opens with a long description of nature, but here the words relate to living creatures – road runners, lizards, coyotes, rabbits, antelope. And then man. A man and his mule arrive at the spring; they’re the latest in a long line of travelers, stretching back to time immemorial. Clark describes the ordinary events and the drama of this lone man’s stay. After a year he leaves (this time more alone than when he came); at his departure “the disturbed life of the spring resumed.” This story evokes the great and harsh cycle of existence, and man’s uneasy place in it. 

Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett 
There’s a grimy feel to this novel, and that’s its main virtue. Hammett’s unembellished prose efficiently captures the disreputable denizens of Poisonville. Dinah Brand stands out, fascinating and formidable; I almost kept reading just to get more of this tough dame. Almost. I quit the book at the halfway point, after a couple of ridiculous shootouts. Actually, my doubts began early on, when the nameless private eye states that he knows who murdered a guy. Huh? I had no clue who did it (things had gotten complicated quick). It turns out to be a character who appears for only two pages and who’s presented (by the author) as the most unlikely suspect of all. This isn’t playing fair with the reader. Then a boxer knocks out an opponent who’s supposed to win (the fix is on) and immediately gets a knife in the neck. This knife is thrown from somewhere in the back of a crowded arena. I’m supposed to swallow this nonsense? The real crime that needs solving is why the Library of America devoted two volumes to the work of Hammett. 

The Radiant Way - Margaret Drabble 
I consumed this book like comfort food – and it wasn’t junk but carefully-prepared dishes like smoked salmon with morel sauce. It gave me a warm feeling of comradery, which is the strength of TV series featuring an enduring set of friends (though this novel’s three female characters are too discerning to waste their time watching sitcoms on the telly). Alix is the most grounded; Esther is otherworldly and enigmatic; Liz vacillates between contentment and turmoil. The novel opens with a New Year’s Eve party given by Liz and her husband at their posh Harley Street home; as 1980 is rung in Liz learns that her husband is leaving her for another woman. What follows covers a span of five years; the women’s lives are altered in many ways, some good, some bad. England itself (there’s a strong element of social commentary) is greatly changed, much for the worse. This is an ambitious, complex, intelligent book. It’s also a messy melange. But I have no desire to go into its faults. For nearly four hundred densely-packed pages it kept alive in me those feelings of comfort and comradery, and feelings sweep aside criticism. I thought Drabble might be going seriously off course in the book’s last fourth, but she righted the ship and sailed it into its berth – to the very place where it belonged. * 

Death of a Doxy - Rex Stout 
Archie takes center stage, and he’s as lively and engaging as ever. My problem with this Nero Wolfe outing is that the murderer’s identity is based entirely on an alias he uses in an extortion note. Does the name Milton Thales mean anything to you? It didn’t to me, but to Nero Wolfe it pointed directly to one person. If this character hadn’t chosen that particular name there wouldn’t be a scrap of evidence against him. That’s flimsy. A mystery should present a preponderance of evidence that enables the attentive reader to identify the bad guy. Stout usually does this, but not here. Also, in the three Wolfe mysteries I’ve previously read the guilty party commits suicide; in this one he’s murdered, though the police rule his death to be a suicide. Case closed.

The Odd Women - George Gissing
Gissing’s “odd women” are the unmarried ones. What’s their plight in Victorian England? And what’s the plight of women who marry only to escape spinsterhood? Written in 1893, by a man, this is a feminist novel. I don’t think any modern feminist can fault him – unless they want simplistic black and white scenarios. The cast of characters is large and varied; some people act badly, but even the deeply flawed are comprehensible. The prose has a straightforward clarity; it plods along at a comfortable pace. What matters when reading Gissing is the quality of his mind; he was a complex thinker who went deep into a subject. This quality is evident in how he was able to surprise me. On important occasions I expected something to happen, but it didn’t happen the way I had foreseen. This was no trick; what does happen is exactly what would happen; I was (shame on me) expecting the formulaic version. Gissing wrote at the close of the Victorian period, and he questions the still-prevailing values of that time; what’s remarkable is how his honesty and incisiveness make him relevant today. He doesn’t allow his plot or characters to wander far from the subject he’s tackling, so he’s an issue-oriented author. As for the issue of concern here – the relationship between the sexes – he sees it as inherently fraught with difficulties.

The Sea of Grass - Conrad Richter
This would be a long short story if you took away the repetition and the over-abundance of adjectives. What would the story be about? A cattle baron – the imperious Colonel – holding sway over his empire of grass (about to be invaded by hordes of nesters) and his marriage to the beautiful and fascinating Lutie. Both characters are depicted as larger than life; Richter is trying for a legendary, elegiac quality. He fails. To be true to its subject, this novel should have been lean and mean and much less adoring of the Colonel and Lutie. They don’t deserve adoration. Lutie abandons her husband and three small children (one fathered by a man other than her husband), but she’s still a “lady.” The Colonel is supposed to be tremendously imposing, but he’s unable to impose his will in any instance. These two are treated with hushed awe by Hal, the Colonel’s nephew. But Hal, for all his wordiness, doesn’t get into the gritty matters I wanted to know about: the relationship between the Colonel and Lutie, the dynamics of the infidelity, Lutie’s whereabouts for twenty years. One could say that Hal wasn’t privy to these intimate matters. True – but why use him as the narrator? Because the result is a novel about a cattle empire that has no beef in it.

The Red Box - Rex Stout
Entertaining, though not up to the level of the previous two Nero Wolfe mysteries I read. In this one Archie plays a minor role, and I missed his liveliness. Also, the plot was too complex for me to unravel its many intricacies. But I figured out some, and that made me feel good; when Wolfe connected the dots I didn’t feel cheated (I’m not as smart as he is and I know it). A point of interest: in all three books the murderers commit suicide; in two cases Wolfe provides him/her with the means to do so, and in the other he knows that the man intends to kill himself and does nothing to stop him. Dr. Kevorkian would approve.

Some Buried Caesar - Rex Stout
Another excellent Nero Wolfe mystery. The breezy and amusing Archie is more interesting than the one-dimensional Wolfe, and it was wise of Stout to make him the first person narrator. Unlike many whodunits, no information is withheld from the reader and no improbable plot twists pop up at the end. Stout plays fair by providing us with the clues we need to solve the crime. The writing has a light, casual touch; Stout didn’t labor over these books, but Archie wouldn’t either. The rustic setting works nicely, the varied cast of characters come to life. Stout is especially good in his portrayals of women (Lily Rowan is a treat, sexy and fun). Though dealing with murder, Stout avoids gore and sleaziness. What we get in the Nero Wolfe series is sheer enjoyment. Of what worth is sheer enjoyment? I don’t believe a novel must aspire to greatness to have value. If it succeeds in what it sets out to do, it’s a success; if it fails, it’s a failure. Rex Stout – like Ian Fleming – succeeded to a high degree in what he attempted. Sometimes we simply need to be entertained.

Double Indemnity - James M. Cain
This was Cain’s second novel. Like The Postman Always Rings Twice, one of its virtues is sparseness (was Cain our first minimalist?). There are no long descriptions of people and places. And, really, do detailed descriptions matter to a reader? Don’t we simply forget them? Cain uses dialogue to move his plots along; emotions are conveyed with the fewest words possible. These two novels offer lessons in how to engage and hold a reader’s attention. Postman is better by far; it’s more visceral, the story line more efficient, the feelings of the two characters more convincing. In Indemnity I didn’t understand what motivated the narrator to embark on the murder scheme; I didn’t believe in his pure love for the daughter; the twists at the end were improbable. As for the last chapter – it goes beyond the unexpected into the truly weird; I wanted to reject it but found that the lunacy of the situation – in which Cain posits a fatal bond between the damned – had a perverse power.

The Defense - Vladimir Nabokov (Russian)
I previously wrote that “plot obfuscation and stylistic ornamentation are mostly just clutter.” When I used the qualifier “mostly” I was thinking of Nabokov. His plot twists are intriguing, his ornamentation is brilliant; they enrich his work. But he has to enrich a discernible plot and comprehensible characters. The Defense was a tricky undertaking, and that’s because the protagonist, who we first meet as a boy, is severely autistic (this was written in 1930, when autism was not widely recognized, yet Luzhin has all the symptoms). How far can you go in exploring the inner life of such a person? Luzhin is a chess genius; but chess, for him, leads to a destructive obsession. The novel shifts away from the black and white squares and delves into Luzhin’s relationship with a young woman. This woman is endowed (or burdened) with a hyper-compassionate nature. She initially displays a lighthearted interest in this very unusual man, but she inspires in him a blind devotion. It’s not blind in its completeness, but in its incomprehension; Luzhin cannot understand or even relate to another person. She, in turn, cannot leave someone so in need of her. The ending, in which madness prevails with a vengeance, flounders badly. This supports my belief that Nabokov didn’t know what to do with his peculiar character. Ornamentation and obfuscation are this novel’s main features, and they’re not enough.

Confessions of an Advertising Man - David Ogilvy
This is a book about business. It’s practical, thorough, well-organized, honest and intelligent. Ogilvy takes pride in producing work of superior quality, but his primary goal is the making of money, both for the clients he represents and for himself. He doesn’t shy away from depicting the ruthlessness of the world he operates in. He’s a taskmaster who expects much of his employees; if they don’t meet his standards, out they go. There’s a photograph of him on the front cover; his eyes are cold and hard. Young people considering a career in business should contemplate that gimlet gaze. His prose is clear, concise and lively, as would be expected of a good copywriter. He reveals, with surprising frankness, how advertisers go about persuading the public (or, put more bluntly, how they manipulate us); this is instructive – and cautionary. The book was written in 1963, and Ogilvy is prescient when he looks to the future. He finds the over-saturation of ads on TV to be objectionable and suggests government regulation. He sees danger in the unrestrained promotion of materialistic goods and values. He also believes that advertising should not be used in political campaigns. He would no doubt be appalled at the state of affairs today.

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (French)
A brutal novel. It gives off no moral light. Emma Bovary’s adulteries are its focus because they – the transitory intoxication of the senses – are the tawdry focus of her life. But unfaithfulness is merely one manifestation of her corrupt nature. She lies, she manipulates; her profligacy drags her husband and daughter into poverty. As for that daughter, Emma can barely tolerate Berthe’s presence. The novel is full of stifling dissatisfaction, cynicism, disillusionment, despair. The one aspect of Emma that makes her an object of pity is her suffering. She suffers, though not as a victim, and in her final imperious rejection of life there’s a heroic dimension. The characters around her are, in Flaubert’s eyes, merely humans – far from admirable. Pettiness, hypocrisy, selfishness, stupidity are on full display, and the greedy Lheureux attains the lofty status of evil. The one good character is Emma’s husband, Charles; on her deathbed she tells him “You are good,” but his goodness does not touch her; she’s making a cold statement of fact. Soon after her marriage she comes to loath him – a dull man, so mediocre. And such a dupe, ridiculously easy to deceive. Partly he’s a dupe because he deludes himself about Emma’s true nature. Emma lives with delusions too: her romantic and unattainable dreams of glamour and romance (which curdle into bitterness and resentment). At the end of the book Flaubert seems to revel in crushing Emma with hammer blow after hammer blow. Not only is she punished, the innocent suffer too. Charles’s cherished memories of Emma are shattered when he finds love letters from Rodolphe and Leon. Berthe – after her father’s death and in the wake of the financial ruin brought on by her mother – is sent to work in a cotton mill. There’s a perversity in Flaubert’s destructiveness. He wrote, famously, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi.” Could Emma embody all the pernicious and corrupt qualities he found in himself? And could his destruction of her be directed, masochistically, upon himself? At any rate, the novel he created is a work of art. It gives off no moral light, but we’re given a vision of life, and it smoulders. *

Fer-de-Lance - Rex Stout
The narrator of this mystery is Archie Goodwin, and he carries the reader along in his jaunty way. His boss, the redoubtable and massively eccentric Nero Wolfe, considers himself a genius, and I wouldn’t dispute that. Wolfe doesn’t waste words; what he says consistently cuts to the heart of a matter. He’s a private detective, so he uses his brilliant mind to solve crimes. The novel is no more than what it’s intended to be: a whodunit. This isn’t a genre that has much appeal for me; often I’m disappointed in the denouement. Here, too, I was pleasantly surprised. I thought I knew who the murderer was far before the end of the book. I was right, but the twist is how justice – Nero Wolfe’s form of justice, for he orchestrates it – is carried out. The Genius takes the role of God. I believe the punishment he doles out is fitting; but, as Archie points out, it also conveniently absolves the reclusive Wolfe from the odious task of leaving his apartment. “Indeed,” murmurs Wolfe.

Leah, New Hampshire - Thomas Williams
I read most of the stories in this collection many years ago, and three made a lasting impression: “Goose Pond,” “The Buck in Trotevale’s” and “Paranoia.” The last one is a stringing together of incidents that are menacing and violent; it’s strong stuff. There’s a lot of killing on these pages, in the form of hunting and fishing, but these are not outdoorsy tales. The killing of an animal is exactly that – a killing. Williams presents us with men who are drawn to kill, and though it fulfills a need they feel revulsion and remorse. They also have difficulty in understanding and dealing with women, who are often seen as dangerous and domineering. In “Voices” this issue is addressed directly. A man visits his dying mother in a nursing home; while there he makes phone calls to his wife. He realizes that the problems he has with both women stem from his relationship with his mother; his upbringing by this willful, selfish, outrageous woman has turned him into a man without courage. “Voices” succeeds in large part because of its understated approach. Williams, who is clearly the protagonist in these stories, too often succumbs to a pitfall of autobiographical fiction: he overdramatizes himself. Still, this collection is deserving of respect.