Volume 51, Number 19 · December 2, 2004
The Missing Link
By John Banville
Langrishe, Go Down
by Aidan Higgins
Dalkey Archive, 253 pp., $12.95 (paper)
A Bestiary
by Aidan Higgins
Dalkey Archive, 742 pp., $14.95 (paper)
Flotsam & Jetsam
by Aidan Higgins
Dalkey Archive, 470 pp., $15.95 (paper)
The American publication of Aidan Higgins's Langrishe, Go Down is, or should be, a cause for celebration. The novel, Higgins's first, appeared in Britain in 1966 to wide critical acclaim, and was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, which still counted for something in those pre-Booker days. Although Higgins went on to produce further novels—notably Balcony of Europe, a big, ambitious tale of a mixed group of expatriates living in Spain in the 1960s—Langrishe is without doubt his masterpiece. It is a bitter fate for a novelist to be best known for his first work. However, Higgins should keep in mind the response Joseph Heller gave to an interviewer who was crass enough to remark the fact that Heller had not managed to write anything better than his first book, Catch-22: 'Who has?' Heller asked.
Review, 3455 words
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