The Ring Is Closed – Knut Hamsun (Norwegian) 
Hamsun wrote this novel when he was seventy-seven, and it would be his final one. A subsequent book, On Overgrown Paths, was mainly a defense of his wartime actions (he was accused of collaboration with the Nazis). I don’t know if his life had begun to unravel when Ring was published in 1936, though from its tone of resignation I suspect it did. His main character is a strange man, disconnected from those things that others find important. Abel has a deeply ingrained “What does it matter?” attitude. On rare occasions he has strong feelings, but they soon fade. His relationships with people – even the three women who play a role in his life – lack depth. When his father dies he comes into a substantial inheritance, but there’s nothing he wants to spend the money on: his ragged old jacket is fine, he’s satisfied living in a squalid shack. He pays off debts and gives much of the rest away – he’s generous with something that has little value to him. Abel isn’t always on the fringes of life; at one point he’s made captain of a milkboat that carries passengers up and down the river. A respectable job, but he tires of it, and off he goes to a foreign country. When he’s away from his home village the narrative shifts to other characters. This loosely constructed novel is written in a prose stripped to the bare essentials, but Hamsun can still hold one’s interest and is still a master at depicting character. His title suggests that he saw Ring as his last work of fiction, and in it he imparts the somber conclusion that all striving – even for happiness – is futile.

Daughters of the Samurai – Janice Nimura
After Commodore Perry’s fleet forced its entry into Edo Bay in 1853, the Japanese government realized that they could no longer continue living in isolation, clinging to a backward technology. One offshoot of their determination to catch up was to send five girls to the United States, where they would live with American families and attend American schools; their purpose was to absorb Western culture (and, of course, the English language) and – after ten years – return to Japan prepared to impart what they had learned. We follow the lives of three of the girls sent on this odd mission: six year old Ume, eleven year old Shige and twelve year old Sutematsu. They grew up Americanized and thus lost contact with the world to which they returned (this would be especially true for Ume). To tell their story the author had to depend entirely on research; we get a patchwork of excerpts from letters, newspapers and the writings of people who had contact with the girls. But a book so dependent on secondhand sources is limited. The main problem with Daughters is that the girls (later women) don’t come to life. I never got more than an inkling of their feelings. They didn’t keep intimate diaries, and in their letters they were sparing as to what they revealed. In the case of two of the girls, on their return to Japan they married and had children; the demands of family life left them little time for letter writing. As a result Ume, who remained single (and kept up a vigorous correspondence), takes center stage, but her efforts to assert herself as an educator didn’t make for compelling reading. This book is no more than a dutiful, plodding effort, and the prose, both Nimura’s and her quoted sources, is too often either stilted or gushy.

A Permanent Member of the Family – Russell Banks
I read eight of the twelve stories in this collection before I called it quits. Banks has seventeen novels to his credit, and many have achieved acclaim. I read one, Continental Drift, and, though I didn’t care for it, it was a serious, ambitious work. Most of these stories are tired and tepid. The prose is competent – Banks writes in a straightforward, simple way – but if he makes a point (often he doesn’t, as in the piddling “Green Parrot”) it’s a flimsy one. My reaction to “Christmas Story” and “Lost and Found” was, basically, “Huh?” – because they wound up nowhere. “Transplant” does have a purpose; in it a man meets with the wife of the donor of his heart to let her listen to it beat; I should have found this touching, but instead it struck me as gimmicky. “Former Marine” is the best of the lot, but it suffers from a flawed premise: that an old guy could pull off bank robberies with such ease. I’ll close this review with one more observation. Banks is seventy-eight years old. This collection may be his last work of fiction, and he ends it with “The Green Door.” In it a poor soul (drunk and probably mentally ill) is stabbed to death. Though this could have been prevented by the first person narrator, he tells the homeless guys who will commit the murder and robbery, “He’s all yours.” Then, “for reasons I can’t know or name,” he watches the proceedings (which are described in graphic detail); then he drives home, goes to bed, and quickly falls to sleep. What we have is a scene of brutality made worse by the presence of an unfeeling observer. Does Banks want to end his career on such a note?

Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite - Anthony Trollope
Something unique from Trollope: a short novel. This is a strength, because he’s able to narrow his focus and concentrate on three people. A young woman falls in love with a ne’er-do-well; her father blocks her from marrying the man. Emily, George, and Sir Harry are engaged in a struggle so compelling that I was tempted to peek ahead to see what happened (I resisted). Actually, as we get to know George, he’s much worse than a ne’er-do-well. But Emily, though she becomes aware of his faults, has given herself to him forever. The characters are in vises, ones made up of moral choices and matters of the heart, and Trollope turns the screws tighter and tighter. At the end I reluctantly accepted Emily’s refusal to budge in her resolve – “reluctantly” because I doubted that a young, sensible woman would give up her life for love, especially when she becomes aware that her love has never been reciprocated. This was, for me, the only weak point in the novel; it shouldn’t have been a tragedy, but Emily makes it one. I wondered how Trollope felt about her. Did she, in his eyes, embody a Victorian virtue?

Continental Drift - Russell Banks
Banks set out to write a major novel, a commentary on American life. After 400 pages he closes with the words: “Go, my book, and help destroy the world as it is” (italics the author’s). Banks tackles something important – the values and dreams that determine the course of our lives – and does it in a way that’s engrossing. The problem I had emerged gradually, and it involved the main character. Early on I began to dislike Bob Dubois; then I didn’t respect him; then I didn’t believe in him. His emotions – anger, discontent, confusion, longing, frustration, etc. – got to be overwhelming. I did like his wife and thought that she deserved a better man than conflicted Bob. Especially since he hasn’t grasped the concept of being faithful (I could have done without the icky sex scenes). One of Bob’s infidelities involves a black woman; the relationship is supposed to have depth but seems injected into the plot so that the author can pontificate on the subject of race relations. Banks belongs to the pile-it-on school of writing. Bob becomes a walking assemblage of problems and issues, and the predicament he’s in deteriorates drastically. The ending is improbable and overwrought; instead of eliciting sorrow, I merely thought Bob’ actions were incredibly dumb. So, sorry to say, this was a novel (and an author) that I became alienated from; those closing words – “Go, my book . . .” – struck me as mighty pretentious. Another major plot line involves Haitians trying to get to America. This, again, shows the scope and importance that Banks aims for (plus he’s out to impress with his knowledge of Haitians). The suffering of these people is conveyed in all its horror (more piling on, but I suppose it’s justified). However, the main character, Vanise, gradually becomes zombie-like, and I couldn’t relate to a zombie. Her teenage cousin, Claude, was the person I most admired, and his death – which occurs offstage – was the only one that moved me.

The Sheltered Life - Ellen Glasgow
In Part I Glasgow has a nine-year-old girl observe the adult world; the reader sees problems that the child has inklings of. Though emotions were exaggerated, this section was fairly successful. I went into Part II with good will, but all I got were the musings of the elderly grandfather. His thoughts – about Life, unfulfilled hopes, a lost love, etc. – are expressed in a hypersensitive (and obscure) way: “Was this second self of his mind, as variable as the wind, as nebulous as mist, merely the forgotten consciousness of the poet who might have been?” It didn’t take much of such rambling before I abandoned the book.

The Man Who Owned New York - John Jay Osborn, Jr.
This might have been a nice little diversion if the author hadn’t set up expectations that aren’t met. Take the title. The man who owns New York is Marsiglia, but the role he plays is so trifling that he could have been omitted from the novel. In the first paragraph it’s stated that the main character, Robert Fox, “is losing his mind.” It turns out that he has a few minor problems, but he’s just fine. The woman he loves is said to have inherited some “black part” to her emotional makeup, but it turns out that she’s eminently well-adjusted. The young associate lawyer-on-the-rise, initially depicted as eerily “perfect”and “robotic,” turns out to be a nice guy with problems. As for the plot, a dangerous nut case is handled stupidly by supposedly smart people. They want to keep matters out of the newspaper and away from the police, but their actions lead to a fatal shooting in a town house where an auction is being held; the repercussions that would surely follow are swept under the rug. In fact, by the end of this book Osborn has swept far too many false leads and loose ends under rugs. This would be sloppy housekeeping; it’s irresponsible writing.