This is a book which moves forward almost entirely in a fugue-like conversation. It's so short, you almost don't get used to the style. A woman, who we learn has somewhat diminished capacity, has rented a carpenter's gothic house overlooking the Hudson some distance north of New York City. She has a hard time remembering things, doesn't express herself well, and has a constant series of doctors' appointments. Also, she wears the evidence of the abuse her husband has inflicted on her.

The story poses more questions than it intends to answer, it would appear. What's really wrong with our renter, Mrs. Booth? Does her husband, whose visit threatens more violence, intend to pull the same sort of trick with Mrs. Booth's friend, Edie? Is McCandless, the owner of the house, an espionage worker and mineral-rights tycoon, or a pathological liar?

We end in terrible menace. Mrs. Booth is dead, and Mr. Booth, now heir to a tidy fortune, climbs into a limousine with Edie. Mrs. Booth's brother dies, too, in a plane crash with a Senator. It was probably just me, but I remain confused about a lot of it to this day.

Confusing, fascinating, effective, eerie, unpredictable. Spend some time with this book and cut yourself adrift from certainty. In this case, it's fun! ( )

From this hilariously vicious satire you get the overwhelming impression that there is simply nobody that William Gaddis didn't hate. I try not to assume that an author uses their characters as nothing but mouthpieces for their own views, but this sort of fevered and incredibly tense bile-spitting half-conversation had to come from somewhere, didn't it? Or is it simply that good a satire? A truly, savagely seething novel and one of the best things I've yet read. If this is Gaddis' weakest work - as the general consensus seems to be - how great are his other novels? Call me excited. ( )

Brilliant but exasperating book-- Gaddis decided to write a whole book of dialog, but it's dialog on the phone, and the reader only gets one side of the conversation. Assimilating the plot in this book is oddly similar to the way we assimilate our everyday lives. A chore to read, but worth the trouble. ( )

n 1985 when this book was written, it must have seemed funnier than it is today, when most of the lunacy it describes and posits as funny has become a central fact in the output of the daily news. Gaddis describes with the prescience of all great artists the future battleground for the American soul.

The plot is complex, involving the CIA, missionaries in Africa acting as cover for commercial interests on a mining concession on a stretch of land believed to contain ore, a corrupt US Senator using the missionary as a front for his own seed company to get in on the mining deal, a failed and bitter geologist who discovered the ore years ago, a Vietnam war veteran, acting as media consultant to the missionary, and his wife, an heiress to a South African mining magnate’s fortune, which fortune is locked into 23 law suits, and her kid brother. Also sundry lawyers, a French speaking Haitian maid, a childhood friend, a secret service man, an ex-wife and a whole cast of minor characters and disembodied voices who appear on the telephone.
Like many 19th century novels, all these elements of the plot are brought together by one coincidence: the Vietnam vet and his wife have rented the house they are living in – a wooden Carpenter’s Gothic house in upstate New York- through an agent, from the old geologist. He shows up half way through the book to sort through some papers he keeps in a locked room and becomes the wife’s lover. Gradually, the disparate elements of the plot are revealed and everything becomes connected.
The action focuses on only a few of the characters: the marriage between Paul and Liz, Liz’s relationship with the geologist McCandless, and her brother. The marriage is a wreck; Paul is a passive aggressive who bullies and perhaps even beats his wife. Her loneliness is palpable, and she is the central protagonist of the tale...

Read the full review on the Lectern

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2007/0... ( )