From My Father, Singing

The deadpan, downeast accents of rural Maine twang so authentically through the first chapter of this apologia pro sua vita that it is fair to expect action to stem from the combination variety store and diner where the narrator clerks. But no. Eventually taking form as a letter to a baby son, the novel explores the reasons for the writer's desertion of his family and moves backward to memories of his own father, a mailman doggedly walking his route and returning home to his real life as a craftsman in wood, oblivious to the discontent of a wife who has a more distinguished career in mind for her husband. Only death releases him. The writer, on the other hand, deserts his familyand the beloved little boybecause he cannot in any other way escape the machinations of a wealthy wife and her controlling father or slip out of the procrustean mold they have fashioned for him. The legacy he leaves his son is a letter to explain and replace himself. Filled with shining images that recreate the rivers and hills and skies of Maine, with insights into man's efforts to justify his existence, the letter is nonetheless self-indulgent, repeating itself a little too often and eventually, therefore, diminishing in impact. Bosworth wrote the well-received The Death of Descartes. February 14