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)

Other People’s Trades - Primo Levi (Italian)
These essays are two or three pages long; many have a scientific subject, for Levi was, at heart, a chemist. What’s here is mostly enjoyable, though Levi sometimes goes over my non-scientific head. I don’t think he should have quit his chemist’s job to become a full-time writer. At the end of this book he admits that he finds nothing compelling to write about, and I couldn’t help but think of his suicide. Still, these pieces are not dark, and some offer up a hard-earned wisdom.

Viper’s Tangle - Francois Mauriac (French)
What we get is a letter a man is writing to his wife, to be read after his death. An interesting (though restrictive) format, but Mauriac uses it to promote his religious beliefs. The book is monotonous, tiresome and murky.

Flying to Nowhere - John Fuller
A concoction of images without form or purpose. Many of these images are bizarre and gross, but they’re rendered in a delicate prose; this mixture induces queasiness. If I hadn’t read good novels by poets, I’d say, after reading this one (or, rather, part of it), that they shouldn’t write them. The faults and difficulties I find in some poetry – particularly obscurity and pretentiousness – are evident even in the book’s title.

The Easter Parade - Richard Yates
Grueling, as is usual with Yates. The book follows the lives of two sisters, from youth to old age, but the narrative is lopsided; at first they’re given equal attention, then Sarah is pretty much abandoned. It becomes Emily’s story (which is one unhappy love affair after another); Sarah appears late in the book as more of a mess than she was when we left her. I found it all depressing, but I had little empathy for the two women; what should have moved me didn’t. Yates is an autobiographical writer, and it’s notable that the strongest episode involves a poet. I saw Yates in this character, observing himself through the eyes of Emily as she loses all love for him. This masochiostic portrayal stands out in a book that sometimes reads like a case study. I think Yates struggled with Parade; even the structure seems cobbled together, as if Yates were trying (and failing) to find the right path. Still, he makes his point again: Life is hard, full of disappointments and failure. This is another one of his tragedies of the commonplace, though he did it best in his first novel, Revolutionary Road.

Two for the Road - Wright Morris
Wright Morris was a prose stylist. In his books that’s what matters. It’s an interesting prose, but twisty and demanding. If your mind wanders you miss the connections that move the plot along. It’s like working a difficult but accessible crossword puzzle, and there’s pleasure in seeing the blanks fill in, the crossing words combine. But it can also get tiresome. In the final analysis, are the plot and characters worth the labor of grappling with the prose? Often not. Morris seems to write from compulsion, addicted to his puzzle. I think creating the pages of words gave him much pleasure, and he wrote when there was no purpose to do so. Characters come across as fleshed-out props, plots are spindly. The first of the novellas (Man and Boy) adds up to less than the second (In Orbit).

Futility - William Gerhardie (Russian)
Like in a Chekhov play, nothing much happens in this novel, but amusingly. Also, as with Chekhov, behind the charm is melancholy. Life is there, sparkling and vital, but the main character can only sense it, just outside his grasp, with an ache of loss. The problem with an excellent book like this is that it’s faithful to its title. Gerhardie tries to put activity, color, movement into the plot, but sometimes the effort flags, and we’re in a deep limbo where sadness is pervasive.

Liars in Love - Richard Yates
I couldn’t read these stories in the morning because the characters’ unhappiness was too much to start the day with. This is, in a way, a tribute to Yates. He presses on the spot where hollowness and insecurity and illusions and loneliness are. He does this repeatedly, in various guises; in a Yates’ story we know what the outcome of a relationship will be. Still . . . These stories literally ache. We poor humans! The collection has two masterpieces, “Oh, Joseph, I’m So Tired” and “Regards at Home.” They’re clearly autobiographical, as are, I suspect, all the stories (which are good to very good). A lacerating honesty like his is rare and therefore valuable. *

Sleep It Off, Lady - Jean Rhys
This collection follows Rhys’ life, and the early, childhood stories, when the girl hungers for sensual experience, are strong. The closing stories, with Rhys old and alone, are very powerful – frighteningly so. However, the middle stories are flat, evasive, lacking personality (as was the case with Quartet). Rhys cannot put down on paper who she was as a young woman. Throughout all the stages of her life there’s a fear of age, of losing the power to attract. When she faces it, it is terrible. This aspect gives the collection a cumulative power. The last three stories are unflinching – “Who Knows What’s Up in the Attic,” “Sleep It Off, Lady” and a two page story called “I Used to Live Here Once,” in which Rhys transforms herself, in the last sentence, into a ghost.

Scoop - Evelyn Waugh
Maybe, after four excellent novels that used the same general approach, Waugh had grown weary. On the same page he has a character stand up twice without bothering to sit him down in between. This gaffe is one example of a general lack of care. Waugh trots out the old tricks, but they’re unanimated, spiritless. The only feeling pushing this book along is a tired and cynical meanness. He uses his typically muted main character, but this one is so vague as to be without personality – just a disembodied voice answering in monosyllables. However, Waugh gathers his forces at the end and shows how good he can be. There’s a wonderful comic scene followed by a sad and beautiful denouement that evokes an almost palpable feeling of loss.

Auto-da-Fe - Elias Canetti (German)
A great novel, but an unpleasant and difficult experience. Canetti went his own way in writing it; the book is like nothing else. Crowded prose, twisting as it follows convoluted thoughts. The four major characters are grotesques, and, since we’re in their minds, we become intimate. But all are warped, repugnant; it’s exhausting to be with them. This is a black look at humanity, but I think what Canetti reveals is valid: people live with delusions and will keep them no matter what; people do not relate to one another, to the point where they can’t even communicate; greed is the primary human motivator. All this is presented with a venomous humor. Some scenes have a power that is unequaled – such as the death of the dwarf; an amazing scene. *

Young Hearts Crying - Richard Yates
A man and a woman have their faults, weaknesses and self-deceptions revealed to them. I’ve read five books in which Yates has done this. He’s effective because he works with the commonplace – we see ourselves in these characters, so the exposure is discomfiting (Yates can make you wince when a character does something humiliating or stupid). Also, Yates’ prose serves only to reveal character; he’s stripped it down to that alone, and its unadorned directness is commendable. That said, I didn’t like this book. Michael is so unappealing that the necessary empathy with the reader is missing. Everybody talks in the same way, even using the same quirks of real speech. Secondary characters serve merely to expose the weaknesses of the main ones. Lastly, when an author creates a child, and the parents ignore her for a hundred pages, the reader feels a lack in both the characters and the author. Not that this book is a bust; the ending was strong, and I still believe in the authenticity of Yates’ vision of life.