Procrustes’ Bed

Fiction, whether the loose and sprawling novels of the great Russians or the well-wrought and symmetrical works of Henry James, exercises a fascination and hold on the reader that other literary modes, especially poetry, do not. In the novel we enter a self-contained world, real or surreal, and see the action from within. The stronger the novel in terms of character and plot and action, the more we are held by that world. That is my experience in reading Mary Ann Taylor-Hall’s splendid new novel, At the Breakers (University Press of Kentucky, $24.95), which occurs chiefly in the recent past at an old beach hotel in New Jersey. There are also segments of the action in New Brunswick and in New York City, with the long middle unfolding at the hotel—a microcosm of roiling humanity. The geographical area involved is tightly focused, and at the center of this bustling crowd of people, a good number of whom are complicated and complex figures, is the extended family of the protagonist and viewpoint character, Jo Sinclair, who has been married three times and borne four children by these various husbands, none of whom is close to being admirable and none of whom has afforded her and her children a decent stable life. She has been deceived and frustrated in every male affection. In her ongoing life Jo is involved with three men, the best of whom is Victor Mangold, a sophisticated and generous man whose machinations are reminiscent of Prospero. Jo’s world has but one other such male creature in it and a good number who are monstrous.

Her new life begins when she happens upon the old hotel, helps renovate it, and later runs it. The creator of this fascinating world gives us not only the velleities and vicissitudes of Jo’s busy and frustrating life—its ups and downs, upheavals, occasional periods of tranquility and accomplishment—but at the same time limns the exterior and interior lives of many other people within and without the four generations of Jo’s family. The life of the hotel, with its vast assortment of humankind, its endless tasks from the initial refurbishment to the continuing work of dealing with boarders, some permanent, most transient, seizes our attention.

The author presents a crowded and fast-paced plot that includes various celebrations for holidays, beginning with Thanksgiving and ending with a gloriously improbable wedding, as some of the best comedies do. There is little humor here but much in the way of accommodation, reconciliation, forgiveness, and redemption. At the Breakers is a novel that any real reader should relish—and see as a cause for celebration.

Like Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, Gladys Swan is a woman of letters who is accomplished not only as a writer of fiction long and short but as a poet and essayist. A Garden Amid Fires (BkMk Press, $15.95 pb) is her latest selection of stories, nine in all; three of them, including the title story, were first published in the Sewanee Review. The most ambitious and impressive fiction in the book is a long story entitled “Exiles,” a story good enough to appear in any magazine, including the New Yorker. It turns on an incipient affair (which goes nowhere in the end) between a widow, who is the protagonist, and an intense talented writer from Albania. Nothing physical happens between the two, and yet both are changed for life. The story ends, as good fiction often does, without a resolution; and Suzannah, the widow, is still frozen with indecision about her life in Spain and whether to return to the U.S.

“The Death of the Cat” is a more representative story than “Exiles.” The action is remembered long after it occurs when the protagonist and viewpoint character recalls, late in her life, the events that precipitated her parents’ increasingly fractious relation that led to their separation and divorce. The turning point, which occurs during the Christmas season, is the disappearance of the family cat, who is pregnant and should soon give birth. The mystery is one of several that are resolved as Lauren...