The protagonist Robert McIver, grieving for his wife Margaret’s death, loses contact with the outside world and neglects his health and the repair of his house. Instead of Robert, the author refers to the protagonist with his last name McIver throughout the book, probably to add to the reserved attitude of the old man.

McIver is a Scotsman, tough but resigned to fate, and he decides to draw a course to his daily life by writing every morning. While doing that, he establishes a set of rules for an orderly life to reserve his dignity until the last days. His practical rules range from keeping the place clean, feeding himself, and setting a work schedule, to telling a story to its end.

As McIver writes, the reader becomes privy to the details of his life and his imagination, as they mingle and blur, with the stories and memories appearing a little at a time. McIver has been an academic, a serious military historian, and his stories about the Second World War reflect that vocation. In addition, McIver, his father, and his son have served in wars. McIver, left an orphan by the death of his father during the First World War, also lost his son David in Vietnam.

This simple hint of a plot cannot come close to expressing the perspective and the humanity of this book or the mastery in its language. As it is told, the story moves and expands in scope, losing its grief and rage to love and understanding. Although mostly a narrative, a reader does not feel any dearth of dialogue, due to the depth and the intensity of the literary quality.

reading the book a few times over to enjoy the writer's mastery of the language and the dreamy, yet dramatic, quality of the story.

the descriptions of the settings, because they have so much bearing on the story.

as if I had read a classic literary novel, like that of Dostoyevski or Tolstoy.

Peter Pouncey is the president emeritus of Amherst College. He was born in China to English parents and was educated in the Greek and Latin classics in English schools and at Oxford. He specialized in classical historiography and served as a professor in Fordham University and Columbia University. This is his first novel.

this book is a profound, convincing piece of writing full of subtleties; each chapter reflects the commanding prose and the piercing vision of a dramatist.

If a reader would say this novel is about an old man waiting to die, he would be minimizing the book gravely, since the story has layers upon layers of insight and rich drama, as its hero reflects, meditates, endures, and accepts his life and its truths.

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Created Nov 23, 2007 at 10:24pm • Submit your own review...