Barrett is one of a handful of mainstream authors (having said which, I've blanked on other examples!) who can construct a robust metaphor for some aspect of human life from scientific theories. Her collection of short stories, Ship Fever, illustrates this beautifully. Lucid Stars takes its chapter headings from astronomy, and part of its plot from the conflict between astronomy and astrology. The central character, in a sense, is Ben -- real estate developer, husband, father -- but we learn of him only gradually, from observing those who are affected by him. There's no Ben-focussed narrative: just 'Penny' (wife number one), 'Cass' (Ben and Penny's daughter), 'Diane' (wife number two), and the final section, 'Two mothers, two daughters'. To be fair, Ben and Penny's son Webb doesn't warrant a section of his own either: but he's distinctly under his father's influence, and Cass's story is also his.
Penny's an astronomer, and she passes on her love of stargazing to her daughter. Diane is the daughter of an astrologer -- "they don't really tell your future, but sometimes they help you decide what to do," she rationalises to Cass when they first meet -- and finds herself increasingly lost as Cass takes on the role of Problem Stepdaughter and Ben retreats from this marriage too.
The novel is about how each woman reclaims or becomes herself. How Penny deals with a loveless marriage (teaches herself to sail); how Cass deals with a father who's emotionally, and a mother who's physically, not available.
'The region of perpetual occultation ... where we can never see the stars rise ... not lost, just invisible to us. People who live in other places can see them, but then they can't see the ones we can.'
Like everything, Cass thinks. Everything important in her life seems to be hiding in that region, lost from sight. No matter how hard she works to understand the things she can see, she'll never see the parts, just as important, that are hidden from her.
Although the novel focusses on the female characters (and the male characters, for all their effect -- Ben's compared to a black hole, 'lying in wait until love touches the edge of his gravitational field... love falls in. It, and the person doing the loving, vanish forever' -- are scarcely visible) none of them turn against men. Diane says something, at the end, about not learning anything from men (meaning Ben). And Penny says gently, "That's not fair. Just because you can't choose what you learn from someone, doesn't mean you don't learn."
I liked this book very much, as much for the atmosphere -- life on the New England coast, rooftop dinners, cats named after stars -- as for the events. It could be argued that nothing much happens: but it happens very vividly, from Diane's myriad letters scribbled on scraps of paper and shoved under the mattress, to Cass's secret parties in the house next door, to Jordan's attempts to bring the two halves of her family together.
Thursday, June 29, 2006
#65: Dead Air -- Iain Banks
Banks' '9/11' novel, or so one might be forgiven for believing, given the cover illustration (an aeroplane passing the towers of Battersea Power Station) and the blurb. But the opening scene, which shows party-goers throwing things off a roof, and then hearing the news of the fall of the Twin Towers, is misleading: although events, and themes, do circle back round, the post-9/11 atmosphere is mere wallpaper to the plot.
Protagonist Ken Nott ('ken not', 'don't know', geddit?) is a radio DJ notorious for his leftish rants. He is a thoroughly dislikeable protagonist. He embarks on an affair as lavish as it's unwise, with a woman who bears the scars of a lightning strike and believes that at the moment of the strike, she became two people in two different universes. This belief may be what enables her to talk her way out of a tight corner, but we only have Nott's word for that.
On reflection, I think the real story in Dead Air is Nott's gradual understanding and appreciation of perspective. He begins to realise that friendship is more important than money or status: that the law doesn't have much to do with ethical right and wrong:
I'm not a particularly good person. I've lied and I've cheated and it's no consolation that little of it was illegal ... none of that means very much compared with betraying the people you're closest to; that's the stuff to really be ashamed of.
It's a relentlessly physical novel: sex and violence everywhere, and Nott's abortive career as Man of Action -- ok, one nail-bitingly tense break-in which teeters on the edge of farce. And, for a Scottish author, it's a peculiarly Londonish novel, with a real sense of place: a houseboat in Chelsea, Soho clubs, Docklands penthouses ... Scotland, in Dead Air, is where people escape to, where they go when they're offstage.
I didn't find the ending effective -- too trite, too facile, not enough questions asked -- and I didn't care for Nott, or his rants. And couldn't help but feel occasionally (as with the rant on the use of sound in SF films) that the author was indulging a personal whim, rather than furthering either plot or character.
Banks is a fine and witty writer, and this is an engaging book, on some levels: but I can't say I actually liked it.
Protagonist Ken Nott ('ken not', 'don't know', geddit?) is a radio DJ notorious for his leftish rants. He is a thoroughly dislikeable protagonist. He embarks on an affair as lavish as it's unwise, with a woman who bears the scars of a lightning strike and believes that at the moment of the strike, she became two people in two different universes. This belief may be what enables her to talk her way out of a tight corner, but we only have Nott's word for that.
On reflection, I think the real story in Dead Air is Nott's gradual understanding and appreciation of perspective. He begins to realise that friendship is more important than money or status: that the law doesn't have much to do with ethical right and wrong:
I'm not a particularly good person. I've lied and I've cheated and it's no consolation that little of it was illegal ... none of that means very much compared with betraying the people you're closest to; that's the stuff to really be ashamed of.
It's a relentlessly physical novel: sex and violence everywhere, and Nott's abortive career as Man of Action -- ok, one nail-bitingly tense break-in which teeters on the edge of farce. And, for a Scottish author, it's a peculiarly Londonish novel, with a real sense of place: a houseboat in Chelsea, Soho clubs, Docklands penthouses ... Scotland, in Dead Air, is where people escape to, where they go when they're offstage.
I didn't find the ending effective -- too trite, too facile, not enough questions asked -- and I didn't care for Nott, or his rants. And couldn't help but feel occasionally (as with the rant on the use of sound in SF films) that the author was indulging a personal whim, rather than furthering either plot or character.
Banks is a fine and witty writer, and this is an engaging book, on some levels: but I can't say I actually liked it.
#64: A Thread of Grace -- Mary Doria Russell
The Sparrow is one of the SF novels that renewed my enthusiasm for the genre: its sequel, Children of God, didn't move me as much, but was just as clearly the work of a writer with a gift for characterisation, telling details and dramatic pacing. For a long time I was wary of reading A Thread of Grace, in case it disappointed me. It's a very different book, after all: set in the past rather than the future, our world rather than an alien planet ...
It didn't disappoint.
A Thread of Grace tells the entwined stories of the people of a small (imaginary) town in North Italy during WWII. Some are Jews, trying to escape occupying German forces: some are Catholics: some are Germans. Some are collaborators, some are partisans. What they all are, each in a different way, is human, three-dimensional: real people with flaws, delusions, petty animosities. (Angelo thinks he's been sent away from his parents because he was too noisy and made his baby sister cry: doesn't realise that if he doesn't go into hiding he's doomed by his faith.)
The most fascinating of the protagonists was, for me, Renzo Leoni, a Jewish veteran of Italy's colonial war in Abyssinia, where he flew bombing missions and let passion overtake reason. Everything he does can be read as a kind of atonement: but (like Emilio Sandoz in The Sparrow) he does it all with grace and ease and humour.
The novel doesn't flinch from atrocity, but neither does it dwell upon the horrors of war. Deaths are, as often as not, mentioned in passing: they happen off-stage. And Russell is not afraid to confront death in all its randomness. In an afterword, she explains her method:
So many survivors tell us it was blind dumb luck, not courage or decision, that got them through the war. I wanted that element of chance in the story, so I made a list of the characters, and my son flipped a coin. Heads, the character lived. Tails, the character died. How and why and when -- that was up to me as the storyteller.
An unusual technique, but a very effective one, because quite early on it becomes clear that none of the characters are safe. I mean, obviously they're not safe: they're in the middle of a war. But they're not safe from their author: a pivotal character on one page might well die on the next.
There's just enough of the other side's perspective -- a German doctor who's deserted, a commandant who's trying to govern fairly -- to provide a context that's probably more familiar to many readers than the struggles of Italian partisans during Occupation. (It's novels like this, and Captain Corelli's Mandolin -- to which I'm surprised it's not more generally compared, though the cast is much larger and the focus different: there's a shared humanism -- that make me realise how patchy my own knowledge of WWII, beyond Great Britain, is.)
Which all sounds terribly grim and earnest: but there's humour aplenty, of the triumph-in-adversity sort as well as the quiet sly humour of the oppressed, throughout the book. And some very nice touches:
Opera, too, has been dragooned. On Radio Berlin, Siegfried sings of reforging his father's broken sword: a German counteroffensive is cleared to begin twelve hours later. Tonio declares his love for the Daughter of the Regiment on Radio London: some partisan band can expect an airdrop this time tomorrow night.
A really gripping and highly recommended read, with characters who've stuck in my mind several weeks after I finished reading the novel.
It didn't disappoint.
A Thread of Grace tells the entwined stories of the people of a small (imaginary) town in North Italy during WWII. Some are Jews, trying to escape occupying German forces: some are Catholics: some are Germans. Some are collaborators, some are partisans. What they all are, each in a different way, is human, three-dimensional: real people with flaws, delusions, petty animosities. (Angelo thinks he's been sent away from his parents because he was too noisy and made his baby sister cry: doesn't realise that if he doesn't go into hiding he's doomed by his faith.)
The most fascinating of the protagonists was, for me, Renzo Leoni, a Jewish veteran of Italy's colonial war in Abyssinia, where he flew bombing missions and let passion overtake reason. Everything he does can be read as a kind of atonement: but (like Emilio Sandoz in The Sparrow) he does it all with grace and ease and humour.
The novel doesn't flinch from atrocity, but neither does it dwell upon the horrors of war. Deaths are, as often as not, mentioned in passing: they happen off-stage. And Russell is not afraid to confront death in all its randomness. In an afterword, she explains her method:
So many survivors tell us it was blind dumb luck, not courage or decision, that got them through the war. I wanted that element of chance in the story, so I made a list of the characters, and my son flipped a coin. Heads, the character lived. Tails, the character died. How and why and when -- that was up to me as the storyteller.
An unusual technique, but a very effective one, because quite early on it becomes clear that none of the characters are safe. I mean, obviously they're not safe: they're in the middle of a war. But they're not safe from their author: a pivotal character on one page might well die on the next.
There's just enough of the other side's perspective -- a German doctor who's deserted, a commandant who's trying to govern fairly -- to provide a context that's probably more familiar to many readers than the struggles of Italian partisans during Occupation. (It's novels like this, and Captain Corelli's Mandolin -- to which I'm surprised it's not more generally compared, though the cast is much larger and the focus different: there's a shared humanism -- that make me realise how patchy my own knowledge of WWII, beyond Great Britain, is.)
Which all sounds terribly grim and earnest: but there's humour aplenty, of the triumph-in-adversity sort as well as the quiet sly humour of the oppressed, throughout the book. And some very nice touches:
Opera, too, has been dragooned. On Radio Berlin, Siegfried sings of reforging his father's broken sword: a German counteroffensive is cleared to begin twelve hours later. Tonio declares his love for the Daughter of the Regiment on Radio London: some partisan band can expect an airdrop this time tomorrow night.
A really gripping and highly recommended read, with characters who've stuck in my mind several weeks after I finished reading the novel.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
#63: Knowing Max -- James Long
Miles grows up in the stifling atmosphere of a big house in Worthing, alienated by his mother and oppressed by his stepfather the Colonel. His escape route is via the speed trials at Brighton. One year, via a random act of kindness, he meets the beautiful Ginny, who lets him steer her car to the start line and urges him to come and seek her out next year. Miles does his utmost to keep the appointment, but it ends in tragedy.
Interwoven with the story of what happened to Ginny is the tale of Miles's increasing disaffection with his family. He falls in with a bad crowd, ends up in court ... by the time of the main narrative, he's living in London, concealing his privileged background and trading engine parts and Dinky toys: his current girlfriend, Cat, is a free-spirited hippie who treats Miles' possessions as her own, and is happy to share her vices with him.
One day Miles buys a trunk full of letters and photographs at auction, which turn out to have belonged to Max Birkin Owen. Max, by his own account, was a war hero, an intimate friend of post-abdication Edward Windsor, a keen racing-driver; a free spirit misunderstood by his brother and his sister-in-law. Max has adventures in post-war Europe, mixes with the rich and fabulous at Cannes, smuggles vintage cars disguised as tanks, conducts a long-distance affair with an American girl named Natalie ... Gradually, Miles -- increasingly ensnared by troubles of his own -- begins to piece together Max's life, and discovers that it's connected to his own, his parents', and even Ginny's.
There's a great deal in this novel about the power of memory, and the things that evoke it: about how stories are built up of layer after layer, and how the past reaches into and affects the present. In coming to know Max, Miles is also forced to 'know', to confront, the person he's become.
I'd have enjoyed this novel more if I'd liked any of the characters! The layering, and the unreliability not only of Max but of Miles as narrators, is masterful, and I'm struck by how different the various eras feel, from Fifties to Seventies, and back to Max's what-ho memoirs of the Thirties.
Interwoven with the story of what happened to Ginny is the tale of Miles's increasing disaffection with his family. He falls in with a bad crowd, ends up in court ... by the time of the main narrative, he's living in London, concealing his privileged background and trading engine parts and Dinky toys: his current girlfriend, Cat, is a free-spirited hippie who treats Miles' possessions as her own, and is happy to share her vices with him.
One day Miles buys a trunk full of letters and photographs at auction, which turn out to have belonged to Max Birkin Owen. Max, by his own account, was a war hero, an intimate friend of post-abdication Edward Windsor, a keen racing-driver; a free spirit misunderstood by his brother and his sister-in-law. Max has adventures in post-war Europe, mixes with the rich and fabulous at Cannes, smuggles vintage cars disguised as tanks, conducts a long-distance affair with an American girl named Natalie ... Gradually, Miles -- increasingly ensnared by troubles of his own -- begins to piece together Max's life, and discovers that it's connected to his own, his parents', and even Ginny's.
There's a great deal in this novel about the power of memory, and the things that evoke it: about how stories are built up of layer after layer, and how the past reaches into and affects the present. In coming to know Max, Miles is also forced to 'know', to confront, the person he's become.
I'd have enjoyed this novel more if I'd liked any of the characters! The layering, and the unreliability not only of Max but of Miles as narrators, is masterful, and I'm struck by how different the various eras feel, from Fifties to Seventies, and back to Max's what-ho memoirs of the Thirties.
#62: James Miranda Barry -- Patricia Duncker
A fictionalised account (Duncker explains what's invention and what's fact in an afterword -- for example, shifting birth and death dates for General Francisco di Miranda, who'd 'have liked to see more of the 19th century') of the life of Dr James Miranda Barry (1795-1865), a noted military surgeon for over 40 years, who was found after death to be female.
This is the story of a mask that never slips, from the moment that Mary Ann Barry (sister of the painter James Barry, whose self-portrait I had on my wall for years) concocts a plan to ensure that her fatherless daughter's intelligence and drive aren't wasted on a mundane, feminine life. The child -- I don't think she's ever named -- goes willingly: she's already reluctant to assume the demure behaviour and pretty dresses of a little girl, but dresses up as a soldier for a country-house ball, and is androgynous enough to confuse the gypsyish house-maid, Alice Jones. She idolises her de facto stepfather, the General, who tells her tales of distant lands and strange peoples: he calls her 'soldier' and denies her nothing. Together with David Erskine, a Scottish laird who provides mother and daughter with a summer home, and James Barry himself, the General is responsible for getting the new-made 'James Miranda Barry' into medical school in Edinburgh, where 'he' -- I'll omit the quotes from now on, as JMB henceforth self-identifies as male, without the slightest exception, for decades -- proves to have a stronger stomach and a better brain than most of his classmates.
The novel, in six sections, follows Barry's life from childhood to death: postings in the West Indies (during a slave rebellion), and in the Mediterranean (where there are duels and intrigues: Barry is notorious for a hot temper and a certain belligerence. But he never forgets Alice -- last seen on stage in a Greenwich production of The Siege of Troy, having run away to join the theatre and discovered a fondness for breeches roles -- and they meet again, in London, after a separation of many years.
Each section of the novel presents new perspectives on gender and sexuality, from the bored Miss Charlotte Walden (an example, surely, of Barry's life had she lived as a woman) to the death of Mary Ann; we see Barry through other eyes, and see his own perspective change as he becomes more weary of the world. Again and again the unanswered questions surface: parentage, relationship with mother, relationship with the General, relationship with the old painter ... Most of all, throughout, there's loneliness, coupled with a brisk unpitying self-sufficiency.
However far he is from England, Barry's heart belongs to it: "think of the fresh dew on cow parsley, lacing the hedgerows. Think of purple foxgloves on the woodland floor. Imagine the squirrels racing across your lawns. Breathe the smell of cut grass. Remember the candles of the horse chestnuts, pink and white, gaudy and elegant, swaying above the green, this year's green, the new spring green, folded like napkins high above you. Think of that fine soft rain, delicate as a woman's silk sleeve, touching your face. Remember the late white frosts? Just a faint crust of white amongst the daisies. .. Remember those long summer evenings, of blue shadows and thick gold, that long evening sun you only see in the north..."
"Good lord, Barry, you're a poet, not a doctor! But I could certainly do with a drink."
And later, "one single track, wolfed down by green."
Clear, rich writing, a certain dry humour, and a fascinating protagonist: explorations of sex and gender, the life of a military surgeon (I'd have liked more detail here, but it's not really the focus of the novel) and cross-dressing in the theatre and elsewhere. Compelling and beautifully written.
This is the story of a mask that never slips, from the moment that Mary Ann Barry (sister of the painter James Barry, whose self-portrait I had on my wall for years) concocts a plan to ensure that her fatherless daughter's intelligence and drive aren't wasted on a mundane, feminine life. The child -- I don't think she's ever named -- goes willingly: she's already reluctant to assume the demure behaviour and pretty dresses of a little girl, but dresses up as a soldier for a country-house ball, and is androgynous enough to confuse the gypsyish house-maid, Alice Jones. She idolises her de facto stepfather, the General, who tells her tales of distant lands and strange peoples: he calls her 'soldier' and denies her nothing. Together with David Erskine, a Scottish laird who provides mother and daughter with a summer home, and James Barry himself, the General is responsible for getting the new-made 'James Miranda Barry' into medical school in Edinburgh, where 'he' -- I'll omit the quotes from now on, as JMB henceforth self-identifies as male, without the slightest exception, for decades -- proves to have a stronger stomach and a better brain than most of his classmates.
The novel, in six sections, follows Barry's life from childhood to death: postings in the West Indies (during a slave rebellion), and in the Mediterranean (where there are duels and intrigues: Barry is notorious for a hot temper and a certain belligerence. But he never forgets Alice -- last seen on stage in a Greenwich production of The Siege of Troy, having run away to join the theatre and discovered a fondness for breeches roles -- and they meet again, in London, after a separation of many years.
Each section of the novel presents new perspectives on gender and sexuality, from the bored Miss Charlotte Walden (an example, surely, of Barry's life had she lived as a woman) to the death of Mary Ann; we see Barry through other eyes, and see his own perspective change as he becomes more weary of the world. Again and again the unanswered questions surface: parentage, relationship with mother, relationship with the General, relationship with the old painter ... Most of all, throughout, there's loneliness, coupled with a brisk unpitying self-sufficiency.
However far he is from England, Barry's heart belongs to it: "think of the fresh dew on cow parsley, lacing the hedgerows. Think of purple foxgloves on the woodland floor. Imagine the squirrels racing across your lawns. Breathe the smell of cut grass. Remember the candles of the horse chestnuts, pink and white, gaudy and elegant, swaying above the green, this year's green, the new spring green, folded like napkins high above you. Think of that fine soft rain, delicate as a woman's silk sleeve, touching your face. Remember the late white frosts? Just a faint crust of white amongst the daisies. .. Remember those long summer evenings, of blue shadows and thick gold, that long evening sun you only see in the north..."
"Good lord, Barry, you're a poet, not a doctor! But I could certainly do with a drink."
And later, "one single track, wolfed down by green."
Clear, rich writing, a certain dry humour, and a fascinating protagonist: explorations of sex and gender, the life of a military surgeon (I'd have liked more detail here, but it's not really the focus of the novel) and cross-dressing in the theatre and elsewhere. Compelling and beautifully written.
Monday, June 12, 2006
#61: Fog of Doubt -- Christianna Brand
The working title of this was London Particular: first published in 1953, it's a whodunnit, of which the murder takes place on a night when London's drowned by one of the old pea-souper fogs.
Raoul Vernet is a Belgian, visiting his old flame Mathilda, who's now married to a doctor named Thomas. Thomas's teenaged sister Rose has just confessed that she's pregnant, though she tells a different story to each listener: Mathilda, the live-in help Melissa, her Gran old Mrs Evans (much given to reenactments of desert abductions, and to chucking cushions out of the window), and to Thomas's partner in practice, Tedward. And lurking around the scene are two additional male suspects, the mysterious Stanislaus and the somewhat less mysterious Communist Damien.
The pieces are cleverly put together and the novel kept me guessing -- this was a one-sitting read -- and the characters all came to life, though in a rather dated way that's only to be expected given the book's vintage. It's a good portrait of middle-class life in 1950s London -- assignations in phone boxes, the difficulties of locating an address before the A-Z of London streets was available, the options open to an unmarried mother before abortion was legal: and it's a very competent and tightly-plotted murder mystery, though I found myself losing interest and patience towards the end.
Raoul Vernet is a Belgian, visiting his old flame Mathilda, who's now married to a doctor named Thomas. Thomas's teenaged sister Rose has just confessed that she's pregnant, though she tells a different story to each listener: Mathilda, the live-in help Melissa, her Gran old Mrs Evans (much given to reenactments of desert abductions, and to chucking cushions out of the window), and to Thomas's partner in practice, Tedward. And lurking around the scene are two additional male suspects, the mysterious Stanislaus and the somewhat less mysterious Communist Damien.
The pieces are cleverly put together and the novel kept me guessing -- this was a one-sitting read -- and the characters all came to life, though in a rather dated way that's only to be expected given the book's vintage. It's a good portrait of middle-class life in 1950s London -- assignations in phone boxes, the difficulties of locating an address before the A-Z of London streets was available, the options open to an unmarried mother before abortion was legal: and it's a very competent and tightly-plotted murder mystery, though I found myself losing interest and patience towards the end.
#60: How to be Lost -- Amanda Eyre Ward
This is a novel that doesn't hammer home its themes or its message: it avoids sensationalism, and has a quietness, a restrained (though not humourless) quality that reminds me of early Annie Proulx.
It's the story of three sisters, and the choices that affect them: some are choices that they consciously make, some are subconscious, and some are other people's choices forced upon them.
Caroline is the eldest. It's her idea, as a teenager, to run away to New Orleans. Fifteen years later, she's a cocktail waitress there: single, lost, dreading the Christmas holiday and the claustrophobic company of what's left of her family.
The middle sister is Madeline, who doesn't approve of Caroline; who wants closure; who wants, it seems, to recapture the past.
The youngest sister is Ellie. Was Ellie. Ellie was all packed and ready to go to New Orleans, but then she disappeared. No one's seen Ellie Winters for fifteen years.
Other characters' stories weave in and out of the tale of the sisters. Bernard, the man their mother was due to marry before she ran off to New York and met their father, contemplates his own lost choices and mistakes. Roxie, a teenage runaway, tells Caroline that the girl in the photo she carries doesn't want to be found. Anthony, the liquor store owner, knows about loss: his wife was a victim of 9/11. (Perhaps it's because I don't read much contemporary fiction, but references to 9/11 in fiction seem remarkably sparse: I can only think of two others.) Agnes, a librarian in Montana, writes long and surprisingly intimate letters to a pen-pal she's never met.
I rather like Agnes:
On Friday, I came home after work to find a crisp brown envelope in my mailbox. (I have a snazzy mailbox, Johan. It's a regular metal box, but then I've added a fish head and a fish tail, made out of wood. I conceived of the whole project one night after four glasses of Chardonnay. Quel succes! I speak French.)
I admired the author for stopping when she did, and for leaving the underlying story as an exercise for the reader rather than telling us straight out what happened to Ellie Winters. And when she stops, the story's over, even though several new ones are beginning.
It's the story of three sisters, and the choices that affect them: some are choices that they consciously make, some are subconscious, and some are other people's choices forced upon them.
Caroline is the eldest. It's her idea, as a teenager, to run away to New Orleans. Fifteen years later, she's a cocktail waitress there: single, lost, dreading the Christmas holiday and the claustrophobic company of what's left of her family.
The middle sister is Madeline, who doesn't approve of Caroline; who wants closure; who wants, it seems, to recapture the past.
The youngest sister is Ellie. Was Ellie. Ellie was all packed and ready to go to New Orleans, but then she disappeared. No one's seen Ellie Winters for fifteen years.
Other characters' stories weave in and out of the tale of the sisters. Bernard, the man their mother was due to marry before she ran off to New York and met their father, contemplates his own lost choices and mistakes. Roxie, a teenage runaway, tells Caroline that the girl in the photo she carries doesn't want to be found. Anthony, the liquor store owner, knows about loss: his wife was a victim of 9/11. (Perhaps it's because I don't read much contemporary fiction, but references to 9/11 in fiction seem remarkably sparse: I can only think of two others.) Agnes, a librarian in Montana, writes long and surprisingly intimate letters to a pen-pal she's never met.
I rather like Agnes:
On Friday, I came home after work to find a crisp brown envelope in my mailbox. (I have a snazzy mailbox, Johan. It's a regular metal box, but then I've added a fish head and a fish tail, made out of wood. I conceived of the whole project one night after four glasses of Chardonnay. Quel succes! I speak French.)
I admired the author for stopping when she did, and for leaving the underlying story as an exercise for the reader rather than telling us straight out what happened to Ellie Winters. And when she stops, the story's over, even though several new ones are beginning.
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