Rating: 3.25* of five

The Book Report: Philip Moore needs to know why Grace McElroy killed her children. That might sound compelling as a premise for a novel, but it doesn't sound amusing, right? In Robertson's hands, the quest Moore sets out on is poignant, sad, amusing, and in the end, universal. We go with Moore as he relives his own passage from innocence to disillusionment, and thus comes to understand the (misguided, for sure!) lovingkindness of Grace McElroy's act. She, and Philip Moore, and the reader, achieve a calmer and less troubled modus vivendi after the storm. We all always do. It's the sadness of being an adult. But it's hugely better than the alternative: Never becoming an adult.

Or so I think. And I suspect Robertson did too.

My Review: My mother gave me this book for my 18th birthday. I suspect it was a none-too-subtle jab, but I read it and loved it. Now, after more than 30 years have passed (as has the aforementioned prickly mother), I remember this book with wistful, wry amusement. It suits my hopeful misanthropy, my cynical romanticism, my misty-eyed pragmatism down to the ground.

I'd like to emit a bleat of dissatisfaction that Robertson has fallen completely off the literary map. Writers like him, and Sloan Wilson, and Erskine Caldwell, are all unjustly underknown. Their untricky, simple, heartfelt style doesn't wear well, say some of the snobbier readers. I beg to differ, and I think many more would agree with me than with the tricksy-twee writers' fans.

But we don't have publishing houses. Drat. ( )