James Brown

by James Brown

Holt, Colorado, the setting of Plainsong, is a lonesome kind of place. This small town east of Denver seems to have little to distinguish it from other rural communities of the Great Plains. But it is here that seven lonely people find themselves drawn together into a community of their own, an extended family both plainspoken and good-hearted.

Their stories are told individually at first, in alternating sections and points of view. Tom Griffith, a high school teacher with an invalid wife and two sons, brings trouble down on himself when he stands up for one of his students, Victoria, pregnant and abandoned. Tom's colleague, Maggie Jones, arranges for the young woman to find shelter at the ranch of the McPheron brothers, a pair of aging and crusty bachelors who've farmed and lived alone most of their lives.

"Well, look at you," she tells them. "You're going to die some day without ever having had enough trouble in your life. Not of the right kind, anyway. This is your chance." To them the idea of sheltering the pregnant Victoria sounds like a big dose of pandemonium and disruption. But, aware that they've grown crotchety and set in their ways, they decide to take a chance for once.

The resulting mix of comedy and lighthearted misunderstandings is one of the most engaging features of the story. When both Tom and Maggie's troubles dovetail into the lives of the irascible McPherons, the story takes on an emotional richness made stronger by the deceptively simple and understated narration.

This style, as well as the setting of Plainsong, is reminiscent of Cormack McCarthy's Border Trilogy. And, like McCarthy, Haruf takes his time with gritty ranch details such as how to autopsy a dead horse or determine if a cow is pregnant. He also leaves several loose ends in the novel's closing scenes, which could invite a sequel.

But as it is, the unresolved elements of the plot tend to increase the authenticity of this story of these few braided lives. Together they become the kind of simple and unadorned melody suggested by the title Plainsong.

James William Brown is the author of the novel Blood Dance (Harcourt Brace). He teaches fiction writing in Boston.

Fiction

Fiction

A tale of love and loss in the English countryside

Review by James Brown

by James Brown

When Letitia Davenant dies unexpectedly, her death becomes the first of three that summer. All together, these deaths form a kind of frame for this seamless tale of loss and reversal in the English countryside.

William Trevor's 12th novel, Death in Summer, is a wonderfully evoked work of subtlety and insight. Often compared to Chekhov, Trevor lets us see the world as if through the very hearts of his characters.

On the morning of his wife's death, Thaddeus Davenant receives a request for help from a former love, now ill and without resources. But before he can act on this, he suddenly finds himself a widower with a daughter to raise. A solitary man, even in his loveless marriage, Thaddeus lets his mother-in-law talk him into interviewing prospective nannies for his daughter. When none of the candidates proves suitable, the mother-in-law herself decides to take on the role, though both she and Thaddeus are less than comfortable with the arrangement, "They hover, like uncertain birds. They skirt emotion, steer clear of words that might drag it out of hiding." But one of the rejected candidates for the position, an unbalanced young woman named Pettie, has begun to develop dangerously romantic fantasies about Thaddeus and his daughter. Half convincing herself that he has fallen in love with her in the course of the brief interview, she tells her ovoid friend Albert, "A mansion . . . he's left with this kid in a mansion." It is in the delineation of the characters of Pettie and Albert that Death in Summer is at its most compassionate. The threadbare lives of these two grown-up orphans sadly unravel as Pettie begins to act out her fantasies. Unaware of the sinister possibilities just below the surface of his life, Thaddeus tries to deal with the claims of his former love and the new presence of his mother-in-law in his home.

With its surprise and subtle humor, Death in Summer takes on suspense as it depicts the strands which bind its characters together as well as the chains which enclose them in solitary longing. How precarious are our lives, the story seems to suggest, lightly suspended above a darkness which can bring ruin out of a single summer day. Trevor continues to be a master stylist of the highest order, generally recognized as one of the greatest living writers. Here again, as in his Collected Stories and the recent novel, Felicia's Journey, he blends his narrative skills with an all-encompassing sympathy for his characters. Death in Summer is a dark and suspenseful story of death in life and life out of death. Ingeniously crafted, it is told with the compassion of a great heart.

James William Brown is the author of Blood Dance.