Vanity of Duluoz

This autobiographical novel by Jack Kerouac, his last book published in his lifetime, recounts his football career in high school and at Columbia, his military career in World War II (Marines/Navy/merchant marine), and the details of a killing committed by a friend of his. Though he occasionally turns bitter, the charm and gentle gregariousness of the writer comes through. 

Amsterdam Stories

Written by Nescio (Latin for "I don't know"), a pseudonym for J.H.F. Gronloh, these stories poetically capture the atmosphere of Amsterdam and the Dutch countryside and the passion of bookish youth for overturning the world order. Into what? That is as hazy as fog on a canal or a snow-blind horizon, but the impulse is genuine and the characters are endearing, especially "the sponger" of  one of the stories, who "thought it was fine just to let the wind blow through his hair, let the cold, wet wind soak his clothes and his body, who ran his tongue over his lips because the taste of the ocean was so 'goddamn delicious,' who sniffed his hands at night to smell the sea."

The Russian Girl

This Kingsley Amis novel puts things into evidence that have not been proven -- the love affair at its heart makes little sense -- but the writer's wit, which evokes an amalgam of Evelyn Waugh and Tom Sharpe, overcomes all.

The Discreet Hero

The reader will have been made aware of what Mario Vargas Llosa points out on page 241 of this novel long before that time, but the author's disclaimer on that page that the events of his story could be fodder for a soap opera, or at best are the stuff of Dickens rather than Tolstoy, has a refreshing honesty. This is not the Vargas Llosa of The Feast of the Goat or The War of the End of the World, but Hero is well constructed and offers its own surprises and pleasures.

Frost

Frost is a work that takes tremendous liberties for a first novel. To write about the observations of a probable madman, about his dreams, and to make of him a kind of warped Pascal is an act of supreme confidence. The novel requires more attention than I was willing to give it, but there are doubtless facets and ideas worth excavating. The narrator may be standing in for many readers, however, when he says of the old painter he is tasked with observing, "I had understood nothing of what he had said."

The Madman of Bergerac

From his bed, where he has been laid up because of a gunshot wound, Maigret directs his wife and a retired police colleague to be his eyes, ears, and legs as he peels away the surface reality of a small town to reveal its (yes) dirty little secrets.

A Singular Country

J.P. Donleavy manages, in this account of Ireland circa 1990, to be both sentimental and a clear-eyed satirist. The humor is a bonus. Even the material that is out of date sheds light on the Irish character, and those who are unfamiliar with the species "Protestant Catholic" will get their eyes opened.