The Magicians

J.B. Priestley's mid-1950s novel makes a plea for living a deeper, more fulfilling life, but it resorts to some hocus-pocus to make the point. The magicians of the title are normal-looking men but turn out to be vaguely supernatural. Their instruction to the protagonist, a middle-aged man who is successful but not happy, revolves around the concept of "tick tock" versus "time alive." The former is how most of us live, from moment to moment, with the past relegated to unimportance. "Time alive" is a richer experience in which a person's past and present form a continuous spiral, or loop — in any case, it's not linear. The main character experiences this "time alive" through a kind of reverse hypnosis, meaning he's not being put under but awakened to the wholeness of experience. If it all seems a bit flaky, Priestley is able to carry it off believably. The novel also includes some sharp social criticism of mass media and entertainment, as well as the perils of dulling the mind with antidepressants, that remain relevant to this day.

A Death in the Family

James Agee's novel is a good example of how art can be produced when the artist strives for maximum sincerity. The temptation to break ground in form and content can lead writers astray, but Agee finds his subject in the most commonplace and universal event, a death in the family. Particularly effective is the scene in which the child listens at a closed door to his mother, his great aunt, and a priest discussing the death of the boy's father. Although he cannot make out the words through the door, he is able to evaluate what is happening by their tones. This passage, which combines realism and insightfulness, is one of many effective scenes in this fine novel.

The Disenchanted

The main attraction of Budd Schulberg's The Disenchanted is the potboiler-type slow-motion train wreck that is the main character's life. Modeled on Scott Fitzgerald, Manley Halliday is pretty much doomed from the first sip of champagne on an airplane trip from Los Angeles to New York. But the gradual disintegration is handled skillfully, producing in the reader a mounting sense of dread. If it did nothing else, the novel would be worthwhile for that, but Schulberg also interweaves flashback sections that show the writer at the height of his fame in the Twenties. The sad story is made even sadder by the fact that an incomplete manuscript left behind shows not only that Halliday had not lost his touch, but that he was onto something better than ever.

The Zebra-Striped Hearse

I knew there would be great dialogue when I started this Ross Macdonald novel, but having not read any of the Lew Archer books in many years I was not prepared for the great descriptive and allusive writing as well. For example: "The striped hearse was standing empty among other cars off the highway above Zuma. I parked behind it and went down to the beach to search for its owner. Bonfires were scattered along the shore, like the bivouacs of nomad tribes or nuclear war survivors. The tide was high and the breakers loomed up marbled black and fell white out of oceanic darkness." The case is a tangled one unpacked with Archer's famous doggedness and care.

The Judge's House

For reasons not explained, Maigret has been exiled to the provinces, giving Simenon the chance to explore the social dynamics of a small fishing village where a murder has occurred. As usual, the author reveals the motivations and shortcomings of the human animal with unerring skill.

Christine Falls

The central mystery in this novel by Benjamin Black (John Banville) was not too hard to figure out. I am not usually good at these kinds of things, but here I knew the ending on page 62 (of 340), although there were more surprises in store that I did not foresee. The page cite is no spoiler. There is no "clue" there; it just became instantly clear to me then what was going on. The story is a good one, although a bit long-winded.

But what struck me more than anything in this book was the use of the verb "frown." As in: frown, frowned, frowning, frowningly (an adverb no less!). I wish I had a way to search the text for instances of "frown" and its variants; if there are fewer than 50 I would be shocked. I've noticed the overuse of this word in other writers from England and Ireland, for example William Nicholson (whom I admire). The problem is, "frown" is a lousy, vague verb, and using it repeatedly is lazy and ineffective and annoying to the reader. What is a frown? The first thing that comes to mind is a smile turned upside down, maybe with the lower lip pushed out. Surely the characters aren't making that exaggerated gesture. A subtle frown might be a clenching of the jaw, tightening of the mouth, or pursing of the lips; why not say that? A good writer should be able to find multiple ways of describing a character's discomfort. Instead, we have in Christine Falls a parade of frowns. It's just bad writing. One or two frowns in a book, sure; but dozens and dozens? It reminds me of Richard Price's Lush Life, to my mind a bad novel, in which he uses the formulation "he tilted his chin at (someone)" four times in the first 130 pages. (And besides, I don't even have a picture of what "tilting his chin" looks like; it's something made up parading as an idiom.)

I'll move on to book two of the Quirke series, but I hope it doesn't leave me frowning.

A Long Silence

A Long Silence is not technically the last Van der Valk mystery by Nicolas Freeling — there was one more, published in 1989, that resuscitated a detective that some readers were clamoring for — but it is the one in which Van der Valk is killed. That is no spoiler, at least for readers of my 1975 Penguin edition, which contains a memorial blurb on the back cover. Besides, there's the title. Freeling went on to create a French detective that some critics prefer to Van der Valk, and while I haven't read any of those, they would need to go a long way to match the humanity of the Dutch character. A Long Silence, like many in the series, isn't really a mystery as such; it is more an examination of human behavior. Like most good literary detectives, Van der Valk has seen a good deal, and like most good detective stories, including this one, justice is always provisional. Here, however, things are wrapped up with a tighter bow than some of the others, and that is a fitting sendoff for the commissaris.

Snow

I am not a fast reader, so John Banville's Snow falls onto the very short list of books that I have devoured in either a single sitting or in a day or two. It is hard to top the two adjectives used on a cover blurb to describe Banville's prose style: immaculate and penetrating. The similes strike home, the ear for dialogue is excellent, and the whole has a flowing simplicity that makes it very difficult to stop reading. Add to this a murdered priest in a Protestant country house in 1950s Ireland, and you have a winner.

The Royal Game

I first read Stefan Zweig's The Royal Game, along with Amok and Letter From an Unknown Woman, which are included in my Viking Press edition, probably 20 years ago. On re-reading, they remain impressive and perceptive psychological studies. The chess story of the title explores the brain's coping response to isolation; Amok is about flawed and obsessive behavior; and Letter might be the best thing I've read about unrequited love. Through all of the stories, Zweig is able to hook the reader and pull him along, seemingly effortlessly, to a richly satisfying conclusion.

Unquiet

There are parts of Linn Ullmann's fictional account of her adolescence and parents, Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, that are effective in showing how two peculiar and talented people went about the task of  parenthood. Bergman was mostly absent, but by this account was no less a loving father, if sometimes cold. The sections about the father's decline and death are affecting and revealing. There is, however, in Unquiet a good deal of material written from the point of view of a girl that amounts to a retelling of ordinary childhood events with no real payoff. As in her previous novel, then, a certain flabbiness is unfortunately evident.