Volume 48, Number 10 · June 21, 2001
The Great Sultan
By Thomas R. Edwards
A Few Corrections
Brad Leithauser
Knopf, 274 pp., $24.00
Brad Leithauser's fascinating new novel looks beyond Detroit, where the author was born, up to the Thumb of Michigan, where, not far from Saginaw and Bay City, fictional towns called Restoration and Stags Harbor slowly dwindle, while their younger citizens flee to livelier and more prosperous scenes. Leithauser has a tartly affectionate sense of what life once was like in places like these. He takes note of the after-school activities recorded in the 1952 yearbook of Restoration High: the Future Nurses Club, the Radio Club ('aims to interest boys and girls about radio'), the Square Dance Club, the Ushers Club ('composed of uniformed girls who are on call for working the checkroom at school parties'), and the Lost and Found Club. Restoration can sound like Lake Wobegon, but while A Few Corrections is steadily entertaining, it has more serious aims in mind.
Review, 2355 words
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