Review: The Artistry of Magic, by Helen De Cruz

Review: The Artistry of Magic, by Helen De Cruz

by Rich Horton

Helen De Cruz is a Professor of Philosophy at Saint Louis University, and a writer of SF and Fantasy. She is also one of my collaborators on a forthcoming anthology of science fiction stories with philosophical themes. We know each other quite well, and have worked together not just on that anthology but on a writing seminar for philosophers, so calibrate this review as you will! The Artistry of Magic is a novella, about 18,000 words, her longest story to date, published by an intriguing South Africa based concern, The Pink Hydra.

The Artistry of Magic is set in a version of Belgium, in the late 18th Century. It is told in two threads, one from the point of view of Maarten, an unhoused man; and the other from the point of view of Johanna, a middle-aged librarian. Maarten is an unlicensed magician (having been born to a sheep farmer) and Johanna discovers him drawing pictures and enhancing them with magic outside the library. This is illegal, ostensibly because the magic might interfere with the powerful magic contained in some of the books, so Johanna must stop him. But she too came from a lower-class background, and had to battle to get her position, and she feels sympathy for Maarten.

Soon they are meeting regularly for coffee, which serves partly as a way to feed Maarten somewhat unobtrusively. Their relationship grows more personal, and soon they are lovers. And Johanna, learning of Maarten's ambition to learn more about magic and to gain a license, lends him a book from the library.

In the background, we begin to realize that there are knottier social issues impacting the characters' lives. Some of this we see through Maarten -- his life on the streets, with two friends, the three of them helping each other, as they travel from city to city depending on the attitude of the law towards unhoused people. Some we see through Johanna -- her somewhat tenuous position at the library, and her awareness of the revolutionary sentiments in neighboring France. And we see how both Maarten and Johanna don't really understand the other's positions.

Eventually Maarten learns enough, and earns enough, to get a ring to help with his magic, and to get licensed. But this puts some tension in his relationship with his friends -- and, too, there are problems with Johanna -- the missing book, and Maarten's wandering ways. There is also a sense that both Maarten and Johanna need their consciousness raised about social issues -- and the way magic in this story mirrors to an extent class divisions. All these aspects are interesting and well presented. The one weakness here, I thought, is that the story is concluded rather quickly, leaving certain questions unanswered, and resolving the central story a bit conveniently. Still, this is a sweet and enjoyable story, with the magical art a nice background, and with the sympathy for the lives of unhoused people front and center and believably conveyed.

Review: Evelina, by Frances Burney

Review: Evelina, by Frances Burney

by Rich Horton

Frances Burney (1752-1840) was the daughter of Charles Burney, a musician, composer, and writer. She was a writer from a very early age, and eventually wrote novels, plays, a biography of her father, and diaries. She also had a rather remarkable personal life -- for example, "Keeper of the Robes" for the Queen; a significant supporter of the French revolution (not the violence, but the political changes), married a French refugee, had a mastectomy -- without anesthesia! She wrote four novels, and several plays though only one was produced in her lifetime, besides her diaries, which when published posthumously were much admired, though now I think her novels are the foundation of her repuation. She was often called Fanny Burney; and Madame D'Arblay after her marriage.

Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World (1778) was Frances Burney's first published novel, though curiously it is a sequel. As a teenager Burney wrote a novel called Caroline Evelyn, about Evelina's mother. But at the age of 15 she burned all her early writing efforts, apparently out of doubt that it was proper for a woman to write for publication. Happily, she had changed her mind by her 20s, though she did bow to her father's wishes and did not seek public performance of any of her plays save one. The plays survived in manuscript, but her juvenilia obviously did not. So it's hard to say whether Caroline Evelyn was any good -- my guess is, probably not that good! -- or even how long it was. It was surely tragic, however, for at the beginning of Evelina we learn that the title character's mother was abandoned by her dissipated husband, Sir John Belmont, after she became pregnant, and that she died bearing Evelina, who has been raised to the age of 17 by her grandfather's close friend, the Reverend Arthur Villars.

Arthur Villars is a good if very morally conservative man, and has given Evelina an excellent education. She is a very beautiful young woman, very shy, and very moral. Mr. Villars only hopes to find her a good husband before he gets too old, and for her to have a happy life in the country. And he hopes to keep the secret of her birth a secret, for her father has long refused any contact, and has even refused to acknowledge that he was married to Caroline Evelyn. As the novel opens, he sends her to visit a close friend of his, Lady Howard, and eventually accedes to Evelina accompanying her friend, Lady Howard's granddaughter Miss Mirvan, to London. As Caroline Evelyn's rackety French mother (who had disowned Caroline and only recently learned of Evelina's existence) thinks Evelina is still with Mr. Villars, and Sir John Belmont is supposedly in France, there should be no trouble in the visit.

In London, Evelina and her friend go to a couple of social events, and Evelina creates something of a minor sensation with her great beauty. She is the object of unwelcome, and often quite rude, attention from various young men, including a foppish M.P., Mr. Loval; and a handsome Baronet with questionable manners, Sir Clement Willoughby. She also meets Lord Orville, a much more decent-seeming man, and dances with him. But trouble arrives when her Grandmother, Mme. Duval, tracks her down in London, and insists Evelina stay with her. This forces her to spend time with some exceedingly boorish social-climbing cousins, the Branghtons, who insist on her accompanying them to some much less savory places, where, indeed, Evelina is violently accosted by some young men. At last she manages to return to Lady Howard's, though in the mean time she has had further encounters with Sir Clement and with Lord Orville, as well as meeting a very sad young man named Mr. Macartney. Sir Clement makes more unwelcome advaances, while Lord Orville remains the perfect gentleman. But as she leaves London she sends Lord Orville a letter of thanks, and is shocked to receive an unpleasantly insinuating reply.

Now convinced that a life in the country is all she wants, she still must deal with Mme. Duval's importunities, which include a plan to sue Sir John Belmont to force him to acknowledge Evelina -- which would be fine in its way except that Mme. Duval hopes to marry her off to the loutish Tom Branghton. Captain Mirvan, meanwhile, Miss Mirvan's father, a very coarse Navy man, acts with absurd rudeness to Mme. Duval, as he hates all things French. After additional tribulations (some of them quite comic in the telling) Evelina returns to Mr. Villars, but having fallen ill is sent to Bristol to recover. And there again she encounters Sir Clement Willoughby and Lord Orville, along with some additional mostly comic characters, and over time finally gets to meet her real father, learn a secret of Mr. Macartney's, and resolve her issues with Lord Orville and with Sir Clement.

The novel is really very entertaining throughout. There is plenty of implausibility and coincidence, to be sure. Evelina's otherworldly beauty has long been a staple of romance novels, so it's hardly a surprise. Her virtue is so carefully held that at times one wishes she (and Mr. Villars) would be a bit more tolerant. Also, her dislike of causing too much of a fuss led me to wonder why she didn't give Sir Clement, or Tom Branghton, or any of a number of other men, a ringing slap from time to time. There are two threads to the novel, in a sense -- the love story, combined with the mystery of Evelina's birth (which ends up entangled with Mr. Macartney's story) is one; and the other is the lightly satrical and often quite funny observation of English social life. Both are interesting, though it's the satirical parts that make it special.

Review: Martin Chuzzlewit, by Charles Dickens

Review: Martin Chuzzlewit, by Charles Dickens

by Rich Horton

To be honest, I had planned for Great Expectations to be my next Dickens novel. But a friend had decided to attack Martin Chuzzlewit, so I figured I'd read along. I got impatient, though -- and read it through faster than advertised. I listened to much of it on my commute, but of course I also have a print copy, the Oxford World Classics edition originally from 1982, edited and with an introduction and notes by Margaret Cardwell.

Martin Chuzzlewit was published in 1843. Dickens was by then an extremely popular and financially successful novelist, and was very proud of his achievement in this book, apparently because he spent a lot of effort making the book work as an examination of a consistent theme -- that of selfishness. For all that, the novel was a comparative failure commercially -- though it must be said it still sold well. It's interesting to note that around that time Dickens turned to his Christmas novellas, with A Christmas Carol appearing in 1843, The Chimes in 1844, and The Cricket on the Hearth in 1845. 

Dickens was very open about his aim in this novel, and said aim is pretty clear. He was portraying the effects of selfishness on people, and showing the harm -- to others and often to themselves -- that selfishness does. With four exceptions (not counting minor characters) everyone exhibits selfishness -- of differing kinds. Two characters reform (not necessarily convincingly) -- these are the two title characters, Martin Chuzzlewit and his grandfather, who shares his name. The other significant selfish characters are all punished, though, again, there's reason to believe that some of the punishment is wielded by the author, and might not have resulted in the real world.

In brief terms -- hard to do for such a long novel (Martin Chuzzlewit is about 700 pages in my edition, around 340,000 words) -- this is the story of Martin Chuzzlewit, the grandson of a rich miser of the same name. Martin the younger offends his grandfather by falling in love with Martin the elder's ward, the orphan Mary Graham. Martin is disinherited, and in the process loses his position as an architect in training working for Seth Pecksniff, another relation of the elder Martin. Martin the younger travels to America to try to make his fortune, in company with his friend Mark Tapley. Meanwhile, the other parts of the Chuzzlewit family are angling for the elder Martin's good will -- the egregious hypocrite Mr. Pecksniff, the vicious Jonah Chuzzlewit, the, er, slimy Chevy Slyme. Mr. Pecksniff tries to up his odds for a piece of old Martin's fortune by dangling his somewhat unpleasant daughters in front of Jonas. Mr. Pecksniff's much put upon assistant Tom Pinch, nearly saintly in his self-abnegation, does his best to  help his friends, particularly Martin and Mary Graham, until he finally realizes Mr. Pecksniff's villainy. Jonah and Mr. Pecksniff are both entangled in the doings of the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company, a pretty overt Ponzi scheme (before Ponzi!) run by Montague Tigg, or Tigg Montague, who was also involved with Chevy Slyme. Martin and Mark return from America, completely unsuccessful, and everything starts to unravel ... There are murders, thefts, terrible marriages, multiple fraudulent schemes in both England and America, plague, even an early literary detective ...

The novel is baggily structured, and there is a lot of coincidence driving the plot. The supposed main character, young Martin Chuzzlewit, isn't terribly interesting, and his romance with Mary Graham is very flat. Martin also takes up very little of the book for a protagonist -- perhaps a fifth of it. Dickens does not seem to have been able to portray love interests well -- the two virtuous young women in this book, Mary and Tom Pinch's sister Ruth, are both cyphers as characters, much like Dora and Agnes in David Copperfield. The conversion of the nice but unthinking and quite self younger Martin Chuzzlewit and the repentant elder Martin are both more convenient than believable.

All of the above are reasons why this is not one of Dickens' more highly regarded novels. But for all that -- it's really a very entertaining book. There are longueurs of course -- but there are longueurs in the much greater David Copperfield. The joys of this novel lie primarily in two areas. One is Dickens' prose, full of extended and strange but apposite descriptions of just about everything -- people, nature, buildings, schemes. The other, of course, is the characters, especially the villains. Mr. Pecksniff is one of Dickens' great creations, one of the most obscenely hypocritical of humans, full of borrowed aphorisms and borrowed ideas, constantly presenting a facade of virtue while keeping an eye on the main chance. Jonas Chuzzlewit is less interesting -- he's simply so horrible a person one can only gasp. The nurse Mrs. Gamp, not so much a true villain as a hopelessly almost innocently self-involved person, along with her imaginary friend Mrs. Harris. The various Americans don't get much space, but they are in their brief compass satisfyingly mean. Montague Tigg is in his way a somewhat conventional fraudster, but still holds the interest. There is a variety of less villainous but still involving characters -- Mark Tapley, ever convinced that for him to gain "credit" in life he must maintain jollity in the face of terrible circumstances, and who finally gets his wish in America; Mr. Nadgett, the almost invisible detective; the lugubrious Augustus, the much persecuted fiance of the elder Pecksniff girl; the energetic and ambitious boy Bailey and his friend Mr. Sweedlepipe, the barber and bird seller. There is always (well, almost always) something going on in the book, so one's interest doesn't flag. Is this a great novel? By no means, but it's a demonstration that Dickens had the magic gift of entertainment.

Hugo Nomination Thoughts, 2025, Novels and Novellas

Hugo Nomination Thoughts, 2025, Novels and Novellas

by Rich Horton

This will be a shorter Hugo nomination post than usual for me, as I really haven't read many novelettes or short stories this year. Too many 800 page novels I guess!

Novels

1. Cahokia Jazz, by Francis Spufford. This is first on my list by a wide margin. Brilliant alternate history set in a world where the Mississipian culture of native Americans survived long enough to form their own state -- it's a murder mystery, a political thriller, a love story, and has some of the best writing about the experience of music I've seen.

2. The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradley. A really neat time travel story about people rescued from the past, wrapped around a love story between a man taken from the disaster of the Franklin expedition and his "bridge" in the near future. 

3. Three Eight One, by Aliya Whitely. A very strange story that hardly bears explanation in a paragraph -- mostly it's about the sort of coming of age journey of a young woman from an oddly retro community across a strange nearish future world (maybe?) -- but it's much weirder than that.

4. Navola, by Paolo Bacigalupi. This one is not so weird. It's a lovely fairly traditional quasi-historical fantasy (sort of in the Guy Gavriel Kay mode) set in analog of an Italian city in the early Renaissance era: a coming of age story about the scion of a powerful family. Nothing much is new here, but it's beautifully done.

5. Euphoria Days, by Pilar Fraile. Near future SF about the intertwined lives of several people, satirizing corporate culture and investigating relationships in a slowly disintegrating world affected by some algorithmic meddling with love.

Also:

 The Book of Love, by Kelly Link. This is a good book but it falls short of great. Probably longer than it needs to be. Kelly Link will write a great novel at some time, I'm sure, but this is well worth reading but not up to the level of her short fiction.

 Vinyl Wonderland, by Mark Rigney. A fine novel about a kid making a mess of his life after his mother's death and his father's decline, as he encounters a strange landscape behind the "Elvis door" in a '70s used record store.

Novellas 

1. A Mourning Coat, by Alex Jeffers. A really lovely story about a man mourning the death of his father and forming a new relationship. The fantastical elements are minimal but they enhance a moving and convincing small scale narrative.

2. The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, by Sofia Samatar. A dark parable of class structures in the society on a group of mining spaceships.

3. The Tusks of Extinction, by Ray Nayler. Searing story of a woman with her consciousness uploaded into a mammoth's brain, and her efforts to keep them from being hunted as elephants were.

4. Haunt Sweet Home, by Sarah Pinsker. An enjoyable story about a young woman struggling to find her way in life who gets a job with the title home improvement show, and finds some of the "haunts" more real than expected.

Review: Spring List, by Ralph Arnold

Review: Spring List, by Ralph Arnold

by Rich Horton

I picked this up at the annual St. Louis County Book Fair (same place and time that I picked by my copy of The Ante-Room, reviewed here.) It was cheap and I like books and am interested in book publishing and I figure this would be a comedy about a publisher trying to assemble their spring list of books. It turns about to be something a bit different, though it's still a comedy about publishing, and quite entertaining. 

Ralph Arnold (1906-1970) was for a long time in publishing with Constable and Co., rising to Chairman in 1958, and retiring in 1962. He was also a writer, of light fiction (such as Spring List), detective novels, memoirs and history. He was at school briefly with Ian Fleming, and was a good friend of Fleming's brother Peter. He was related to novelist Edwin L. Arnold, though I'm not sure in what way exactly -- likely a nephew, great nephew, or cousin. (Edwin L. Arnold was the author of Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, a Martian story that seems a likely direct influence on Burroughs,)

Spring List, published in 1956, is told from the point of view of Arthur Lynsted, who has a senior position at the firm Southease and Piddinghoe. Arthur has a wife who is a successful writer of what seems to be women's fiction, and a teenaged son. Elizabeth's bestsellers bring in a good deal more money than Arthur's salary, but Arthur insists that he support the family entirely. So Arthur is in just a slightly discontented mood when his childhood friend Diana comes by to talk about the novel she had submitted to the firm. Diana is married to another childhood friend, General Sir Alured Flowers, who had had a notoriously brilliant Second World War. Diana's novel is a light mystery, and surprisingly good for someone who had never shown any interest in writing.

There is some other publishing talk, particularly about Arthur's rival Edward Sligo, whose firm publishes Elizabeth Lynsted's books (Arthur having refused them for ethical reasons), and who also published a hugely successful novel by one Jas Cobham, who alas hasn't written a second book despite a large advance. Arthur's firm reluctantly decides to publish Diana's novel, though they're unlikely to do much more than break even, in the hopes of convincing her husband the General to write a memoir of his time in the Army, which will surely be a bestseller.

This all comes to a head when he goes to visit Diana, in their old home town. Ostensibly the visit is to finalize the contract, but Arthur is supposed to try to get Alured Flowers to write his memoir, and privately he's just slightly tempted to make time with Diana. But he soon learns that Alured has disappeared, and also that Jas Cobham is around too, having bought Arthur's childhood home with his advance money. Then Edward Sligo shows up, clearly on a similar mission to Arthur's ...

It's a very light novel, but it's pretty fun. The plot has some convolutions which are nicely done, of the sort that the reader likely will guess but will still enjoy seeing play out. The hints at "inside publishing" are pretty minor, though they probably do reflect some truths about how it was conducted in England in the 1950s. By no means a deathless masterpiece, this is still a nice book. As far as I can tell it was never reprinted after the UK edition, from John Murray in 1956, and the American edition, from Macmillan the following year. 

Review: Haunt Sweet Home, by Sarah Pinsker

Review: Haunt Sweet Home, by Sarah Pinsker

by Rich Horton

Sarah Pinsker's latest book is this short novel/novella from Tordotcom. (My quick and dirty word count -- certainly vulnerable to errors -- indicates that it's between 40,000 and 45,000 words, which actually makes it eligible for the Hugos in either the novel or novella category -- I'll put in novella myself for my nominating ballot purposes.)

The story is told in first person by Mara Billings, the youngest of her generation in a large extended family, and it's quickly clear that she a) hasn't done much with her life so far (she's about 30, still working barista-type jobs after a few half-hearted stabs at community college), and b) is pretty sensitive about how her family seems to regard her. The best known members of the family are her cousin Jeremy, who is a successful model and has a gig as the host of a cable show about remodeling haunted houses called Haunt Sweet Home; and her Oma, who was a quite successful wood sculptor until her hands gave out. Jeremy offers her a job as a Production Assistant on his show, and after some hesitation she takes him up on it. (The particular season the story covers involves houses in Western Massachusetts, an area I'm mildly familiar with as my Dad was born and raised there.)

She learns she's assigned to the night shift, which is charged with prepping things for the actual shoots, which are in the day. And part of that prepping is arranging for the "haunts", which to no real surprise are faked. The work is strenuous, and it messes with her sleep schedule, but she finds she enjoys it, even if she's still not sure she's accepted by her fellows. There's one house worked on per week, and we see a couple of these. She ends up with a tree branch salvaged from a "haunted" woods, that she starts carving in imitation of her Oma. And a couple of houses in she meets a day shift person, Jo, who has volunteered to help with the haunting, and who seems very good at it. (And a reader's antennae should perk immediately!) Jo and Mara become close enough friends that Mara invites Jo to a family get-together during some off-time -- and then Mara becomes annoyed again that Jo is -- to Mara's eyes -- immediately welcomed by her family in a way Mara doesn't feel about herself.

Then we come to Cleaveland House, which has a haunted library -- or which will once they get done with it! This episode is described in script snippets shown between the chapters, and it involves books flying around the library at night. This is Mara's job, of course -- but then somehow books that Mara was nowhere near also go flying ...

Well, I won't tell the rest, though it won't come as much of a surprise, and at any rate it's not really the point of the story. The point of the story is Mara beginning to figure out what she needs to do with her life -- and the particular help she gets in that effort. This is nicely handled and believable. The story does have a supernatural element, though a slightish one, and that works nicely too. I don't rank this with Pinsker's very best work, but it's a fine and effective story, and a good example of using supernatural elements without cheating or diminishing them -- but also to fundamentally tell a pure character story.

Review: The Ante-Room, by Kate O'Brien

Review: The Ante-Room, by Kate O'Brien

by Rich Horton

Kate O'Brien (1897-1974) was an Irish writer, of plays, novels, travel writing, criticism and biography. She was born in Limerick, but moved to England in 1919 after graduating from college. She spent much of the rest of her life in England, and some time in Spain, but most of her fiction is set in Ireland. She was a Lesbian (though briefly married), and had relationships with E. M. Delafield and Mary O'Neill. Her fiction apparently often has sympathetic portrayals of gay people (though there are none (that we know of) in The Ante-Room), and is definitely feminist. At least two of her novels were banned in Ireland. Throughout much of her career she was quite successful -- sufficiently enough that the heroine of the movie Brief Encounter mentions reserving "the new Kate O'Brien" from the library. But by the end of her life she was somewhat forgotten -- but has been restored to her place as a major Irish writer in recent decades.

My edition of The Ante-Room was published in 1984 as part of the Virago Modern Classics series. The novel first appeared in 1934. The Virago edition of the book includes an Afterword by Diana Madden, which I have to confess I didn't much like. The novel itself is excellent, however.

It's set in 1880, at the estate of a wealthy family in Mellick (O'Brien's stand in for Limerick.) The central character is Agnes Mulqueen, the second daughter of the family. The mother, Teresa, is dying of cancer, and her husband, Danny, is fairly ineffectual. The only son still in the house is Reggie, his mother's favorite, a syphilitic mess at the age of 36. Agnes is 25, a very beautiful woman, but somewhat stuck for a few reasons -- she needs to run the house as her mother dies; she is a woman and doesn't have the opportunities men have for independence; and, perhaps most importantly, she is desperately in love with her older sister Marie-Rose's husband Vincent, and he with her. But Agnes is a devout Catholic, and also loves Marie-Rose very much -- they had been inseparable as children -- so any physical relationship is impossible.

The action takes place over three days -- The Eve of All Saints, The Feast of All Saints, and The Feast of All Souls. (Or, as we'd say these days in the US, Halloween, All Saints Day, and All Souls Day.) Teresa Mulqueen's illness seems to have come to a crisis. The local doctor, William Curran, has somewhat reluctantly agreed to consult with her cancer specialist, Dr. Coyle, and a specialist from London, Sir Godfrey Bartlett-Crowe. Meanwhile Marie-Rose, who has had another of many fights with Vincent, is coming to visit and spend time with her sister; and Vincent will accompany her, ostensibly for the shooting but primarily to see Agnes. Teresa is ready to die except that she can't bear to leave the feckless Reggie without emotional support. Canon Considine, Teresa's brother, is coming to give her a special Mass. Add to the mix the new day nurse, Miss Cunningham, who may have designs on Reggie despite his illness. 

The opening of the novel is a bit programmatic, as O'Brien sets the scene in a slightly forced way. But once things are in place, the novel is beautiful. It's mostly tiny crises. Agnes hasn't been to confession because she believes her passion for Vincent is a sin, but she feels that she must take Communion at the Canon's Mass. Dr. Curran, a very fine man, is himself very much in love with Agnes, who likes him a good deal but can't forget Vincent. Marie-Rose, sort of an opposite to Agnes, is likewise beautiful, but short where Agnes is tall, blond while her sister is dark, and rather less intelligent -- but she's a nice if flighty woman. Vincent and she torture each other -- they have realized they are wholly incompatible but are trapped. Vincent himself is arguably the least likeable person, clearly spoiled by his good looks, and perhaps feeling himself stuck not just in a bad marriage but in a staid upper class position. Sir Godfrey is immediately taken with Marie-Rose and begins a flirtation -- apparently something normal for him. Miss Cunningham, gently maneuvering for Reggie's affection, is held in contempt by the Mulqueen sisters -- but she herself, having been poor her whole life, and having learned that the doctors she works with will fool around with a pretty young woman in her circumstances, but won't marry one, is sensibly proposing a fair bargain -- a lifetime of caring for an ill and dissipated man in exchange for a security. 

The writing is lovely, and the characterization intense. (Perhaps only Vincent comes off a bit unconvincingly.) The reader truly cares for Agnes, and Marie-Rose, and Dr. Curran and even Nurse Cunningham, even Reggie and poor despairing Danny Mulqueen. The novel moves swiftly through a sequence of heavily weighted scenes: Mass and Confession, dinner, encounters and kisses, songs, fights, and an agonizing extended conversation between Agnes and Vincent. It leads to a perhaps a bit too melodramatic final scene -- but for all that it's a powerful and effective novel. The pain and loss the characters feel is real, and behind that there's a tiny hint of hope. Kate O'Brien was not a believing Catholic, but was certainly raised in the Catholic tradition, and this strikes me as a profoundly Catholic novel, in some ways reminding me just a bit of my favorite Graham Greene novel, The End of the Affair. First-rate work, and I'm very glad I stumbled across this book.