Horseman, Pass By

Larry McMurtry's first novel, watered down into the film Hud, can be a tough slog for such a short tale (179 pages in paperback). The repeated descriptions of sunlight and moonlight and dew wear thin as dressings for a bare trunk of story. The characterizations are sharp, however, and the set-pieces convincing.

The Good Soldier

Ford Madox Ford's novel deftly peels away the layers of its characters until there is nothing left but a raw, usually ugly core. His metaphors and similes are memorable, as here: "Florence was a personality of paper ... she represented a real human being with a heart, with feelings, with sympathies, and with emotions only as a bank note represents a certain quantity of gold." And when he dilates on the human condition from the particular to the general, his conclusions usually strike a note of uncomfortable truth, as here: "But the real fierceness of desire, the real heat of a passion long continued ... is the craving for identity with the woman that he loves. He desires to see with the same eyes, to touch with the same sense of touch, to hear with the same ears, to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to be supported."