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October 22, 2021

George Ernsberger
Posted 10/22/21

Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (Random House).

Her third Lucy Barton novel (depending on how you count; she’s central, again, in this one, and narration is first-person again). An early …

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October 22, 2021

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Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout (Random House).

Her third Lucy Barton novel (depending on how you count; she’s central, again, in this one, and narration is first-person again). An early reviewer has reminded us that Strout, a column favorite but also a famously great writer, reminded us that there are reasons to compare her fiction to Hemingway’s. Which seemed surprising, at first; her personality as we experience it in reading her, is quiet, unshowy, which was never said of Hem—a great artist, but not quiet. Still, it’s true: for just one (superficial) thing, Lucy, in this novel especially, resembles Strout (not a celebrity, exactly, but a celebrated writer). And her style, her deployment of language, seems simple—plain English, which (we are thus reminded) can be delicate without sacrificing clarity. Which makes the whole emotional flow dynamic without noticeable effort—the reader doesn’t feel “worked on,” but willingly, deeply moved.

This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

Not, the title seems to compel me to announce, a romantic comedy, but an inventive, deeply felt and beautifully told supernatural horror novel, the best first novel of that kind I’ve come across at all recently. It’s the book’s first-person narrator, a widower speaking to his just-lost wife, not insanely but figuratively, within himself (we’ve met her, and believe in the depth of his grief). Hard to resist calling Stephen King to mind, at least to make clear what kind of writer we have here. Not that it resembles his work so explicitly, but there’s that level of…quality, is a clumsy way to put it, so, say, originality combined with craft that’s as conscientious as it is inspired. There are elements we’ve come across before: an Alexa-like tech-simulated “personality” that isn’t just mischievous, here, but deeply sadistic, and that’s just one. And that he’s recently widowed leads us to imagine for a little while that it’s his dreadful loss twisting his mind, rather than real horror. But no…

Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane (Morrow).

Really, this is an announcement of what seems to be a whole publishing program that I’ve just noticed. Morrow is re-issuing, over a few months, what seems at least a considerable selection from the whole Lehane crime novel output—or maybe just the Kenzie and Gennaro series (which also includes the great Gone Baby Gone, the prequel to this one). Lehane disappeared from bookstore shelves a few years ago, gone to high-level film and television writing. If you’ve believed me (or all his reviews) in the past, you’ve read him, so this is to let you know that these new paperbacks are handsome “trade” books—and if you never did, you really ought to get to him now, whatever else you do with your attention. Deeply realized characters, complex plotting…the whole, real deal.

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