Volume 45, Number 15 · October 8, 1998
The Crack In the China
By Anita Desai
Death in Summer
by William Trevor
Viking, 214 pp., $23.95
To open William Trevor's new novel and begin to read is to step into a rarefied world as of a perfect English garden where tea is served on a golden afternoon. It is easy to be beguiled by its harmonies and its design although after a little while one could begin to find it enclosed and confining. Can life—English country life—be as calm, as orderly as this? one wonders. Even a death, by accident, occurring tactfully offstage so that we are not shocked by anything so unsightly as blood or pain, barely causes a ruffle on the surface. It is no more than a pebble that has fallen into a lily pool and lies there, a tasteful addition to the design.
Review, 2015 words
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