Jeffrey Lent

IN THE FALL remains hard to rate, with Randolph, the first section, a Full Five Stars, the last Four Stars,
and the boring middle barely a One Star.

Beautiful renderings of life, births, and seasons on a farm include even a train!

Still a mystery is why Leah values her own desire for resolution of her past over
taking a risk that she knows could destroy the Family that she and Nathan spent 25 hard years building...?

Why subvert it with lies and, if she really deeply felt "fear" for her young son, Jamie,
why not stay to be certain that he was protected?

Her selfish refusal to speak to Nathan would have led him to question Mebane's tricks
and spared them all a Northern hanging.

Sure wish that Foster would have decided to stay close to his new-found Aunts who also needed
help and protection.… (mais)

The story of some tragic murders and their effect on the people left behind, set in mid 19th century upstate New York. Much of the verbiage is an almost erotic paean to farm fecundity with detailed and rich descriptions of livestock, the harvest, old farm equipment, many meals, and occasional D.H.Lawrence-like sexual discovery. It seems at times to be a battle between Rabelaisian naturalism and the plot's dour elements – human self-interest and its pal, religion. Strangely, the murders themselves don't seem to trouble us or most of the characters very much. The novel is beautifully written, but its thematic elements didn't click for me, and the story ends rather arbitrarily.… (mais)

I'm a big fan of Jeffrey Lent, but this one really fell short for me. Set in the 1920s, it's the story of Henry Dorn, a 57-year old English professor who decides, after his wife and son die in an accident, to take a luxury liner to Holland, where he plans to explore his familial roots. On the way, he meets the woman of his dreams. One main problem for me: I hated her. She's a cliché of the so-called independent woman of the day: she smokes {hashish as well as cigarettes), she drinks (including absinthe), she wears revealing clothes, she's a regular at sleazy underground clubs where "Negro music" (jazz) is featured, she refuses to talk about her mysterious past, she flirts, she eats "exotic" foods, she has radical political views, she lives a lavish lifestyle with no apparent means of income, she plays cat and mouse games (disappearing for days at a time without warning), and she wields sex like a sword. I hated her, and I hated that Henry fell for this crap; I had expected that he would eventually come to his senses, or that Lydia would dump him. But no, instead we get a cheesy O. Henry ending that was predictable as the last chapter slowly played out.

The novel is non-chronological, jumping from Henry's childhood and his relationship with the uncle that raised him, to his curiosity as a teenager about his absent father, to the earlier years of his marriage and as a father, to his guilt over the way he dealt with his son's issues when he returned from the war. A lot of the reviews of this book focus on his self-exploration. That might have been a lot more interesting if, in the end, he hadn't come off as just another middle-aged sap.

If I've turned you off of this book, fine, but please give Jeffrey Lent a chance by reading one of his wonderfully written, highly original, and absolutely captivating historical novels, like Lost Nation, In the Fall, or A Slant of Light.… (mais)