Look How the Fish Live - J. F. Powers
Seven good stories (if you disregard the three short ones, which are unsuccessful oddities). Five of them feature pastors, bishops, curates, etc. Powers is able to make these stories relevant to someone like me, who has little interest in religion, because his characters are first and foremost human beings. Though the religious life is treated with respect, it isn’t depicted as all-fulfilling. Powers writes about lonely (and often eccentric) bachelors who want to make close connections with others; instead they engage in a struggle of wills over petty issues, resulting in hurt feelings and resentment. My favorite story was “Farewell,” about a retired bishop trying to fill his days and to stay relevant; his plucky efforts are amusing and sad. Amusing and sad – Powers has the ability to evoke those feelings. The intricately-crafted buoyancy of his writing is on display in the opening lines of “Priestly Fellowship”: “The time to plant grass seed is in the winter, the man in the next parish had told Joe: just mix it with the snow and let nature do the rest. So Joe had done that – had believed a priest who rode a scooter and put ice cubes in his beer – and, toward the end of April, had ordered sod.” Powers never states that the grass didn’t grow; he frequently leaves it to the reader to fill in gaps, both small and large; this demands one’s attention, particularly in the dialogue, which can become a tangle of non sequiturs. To do justice to these stories, they shouldn’t be read one after the other; a sameness sets in because of their limited subject matter and the absence of women characters.

Mildred Pierce - James M. Cain
A woman bakes delicious pies, and out of that talent she builds a thriving business. Cain, who wrote this novel in 1946, when the memory of the Depression was fresh, cared about the money concerns of ordinary people. Mildred Pierce is an ordinary person; she has strengths and weaknesses, she acts well and she acts badly. Although there’s one aspect of her personality that’s aberrant: she’s obsessed with her daughter. It’s not motherly love, as Mildred wants to believe; she even has repressed sexual feelings for Veda. The roots of this obsession aren’t explored, but it seems that the girl’s proud, haughty nature, her determination not to be ordinary, made her someone Mildred looked up to. By her teens Veda is in the driver’s seat, and when thwarted in her goals she strikes out at her mother with a whip made of barbed words (“you poor, half-witted mope”). Mildred, no pushover, isn’t a match for a daughter unencumbered by tender sentiments. Though I found this sick relationship fascinating, it wasn’t convincing. The book delves into every aspect of Mildred Pierce, and in all other ways, in all her other relationships, she rings true. A book about a woman making her way in the business world can be engrossing, but Cain needed to inject an element of wildness into his plots, and calculating, amoral Veda provides it. As for the prose, the opening sentence can be seen as a stylistic statement: “In the spring of 1931, on a lawn in Glendale, California, a man was bracing trees.” Cain’s writing is devoid of ornamentation, admirably simple and straightforward.

High Sierra - W. R. Burnett
This novel was written nine years before The Asphalt Jungle. Though it’s much more crudely done, Burnett’s skill at portraying characters in different lights is again a strength. Roy Earle, just out prison, is thirty-seven but feels like an old man nearing the end of the line. He’s a career criminal with a reputation for being hard and dangerous. He is those things, but something has gone soft in him; the conflict between his callous and compassionate sides is at the core of the story. His relationship with Marie – one she wants for security – begins with Roy setting the terms: to him she’s “nothing but a lay.” The feelings they have for one another grow slowly, in a halting, uncertain fashion; love is unknown territory for both of them. This is a sad book. Roy has made a mess of his life; he accepts that fact with stoical resignation. Marie, outwardly tough and self-reliant, is neither; at age twenty-five she feels herself precariously close to becoming a bum. They form a makeshift family, which includes a stray dog. As the net closes in on him, Roy sends a short letter to Marie; it ends with the words: “I will get back some way. Don’t worry, kid. Tell the little nuisance hello for me.” He signs the letter “The Old Man.” For a hard-boiled crime novel High Sierra gets sentimental at times, but this reflects the soft side of Roy. It got to my soft side too.

The Usurpers - Francisco Ayala (Spanish)
How do you review a book that you respect but didn’t enjoy? Perhaps recommend it to others who have a taste for what Ayala has done. These stories, rooted in fact, are set during the medieval and Golden Age of Spain; it was a time and place soaked in blood. The characters are captives in the insular worlds of their particular obsessions. All is ponderous, gloomy, barren of human warmth. With a sinuous, exacting prose Ayala weaves ornate baroque tapestries; powerful tableaus emerge, yet they emerge slowly, and I often lost the thread of thought. Still, I read every story because I hoped to find one which I could feel an affinity for; my hope was realized in “The Bewitched.” It takes the form of a critique of an unpublished autobiography written by Gonzalez Lobo, an adventurer who returned from the New World with gold-filled galleons and who sought compensation from the royal court. The anonymous reader of this manuscript often complains of being frustrated, bored, perplexed, but there are sparks of something intriguing which keep him going (I, of course, could relate). In his account Lobo finally gets an audience with the king. This scene’s abruptness confounds the narrator/reader; after so much insignificant detail, the facts he wanted divulged are absent: “Regarding the audience itself, which should have been, precisely, the most memorable thing for him, he sets down only these words, which bring his lengthy manuscript to a close.” The six sentences that follow succeed in expressing, with conciseness and restraint, the need to withdraw in silence from the futility of ambition.

The Asphalt Jungle - W. R. Burnett
An author should be judged by how well he succeeds in what he sets out to do. Burnett set out to write a crime novel; he wrote one that grabs the reader’s attention and doesn’t let go. But it’s in the depth of his characterizations that he excels; nobody is one-dimensional. With Dix and Emmerich the exploration is particularly probing. In the beginning both men are shown in an uncompromisingly harsh light; their considerable flaws loom large. But over the course of the book they take on layers of complexity until, by the end, they’ve become people we can understand and pity. And then there’s Doll Pelky, a seemingly minor character. She clings to Dix: “She was crazy about this big tramp. Why – was no matter. She just was. If only he had a little kindness, a little understanding in his nature; not much, just a little.” This is a woman who has reached the end of the line, and that end is Dix. She had known only the rough side of life for thirty-five years, had been engaged in a “constant, tough, but inconclusive battle against the long, easy slide into the mire.” She had not taken on the “sordid fatalism” of the people around her. Doll has retained a core of decency. I was moved by her, and at the end I was left worrying about her. That feeling may best define Burnett’s accomplishment. *

Born in Exile - George Gissing
A cerebral novel, unsparingly so. Unlike the other two books I’ve read by Gissing, in this one he makes little effort to set scenes or develop well-rounded characters. For over 800 pages we’re immersed in an analysis of ideas, feelings, motivations. When people come together they talk, and whether it’s about religion or relationships, the discourse goes deep; when people are alone they think. The main character is Godwin Peak; though he’s exceptionally intelligent, he feels that his humble origins will forever exile him from the class of people he wants to associate with. The Warricombe family embodies all the virtues he aspires to be part of. To win the love of the daughter he turns to manipulation and hypocrisy. Even the love story operates on a high intellectual plane. Strong emotions are described, but there’s a lack of action to animate the feelings, so they come across as arid and bloodless. I wanted Godwin and Sidwell to simply share some pleasant time with one another, but they’re given no such respite. Gissing demands a level of concentration that I wasn’t up to. The book was published in three volumes, and I had to take breaks between each one to read something lighter. Yet I completed all 800 pages because I wanted to know how Godwin would wind up. As might be expected from a realist like Gissing, the ending is bleak. In Godwin’s last letter this austere and proud man admits to suffering from a crushing loneliness. The words that close the book come from his only friend: “Poor old fellow!” I felt the same way.