The Assumption of Rogues and Rascals

Smart's much-admired 1945 novel, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, was inspired by her longtime love affair with poet George Barker. This 1978 novel picks up where that earlier book left off, with the narrator, like Smart, meditating on the leavings of love--among them four children. It is a despairing look at life by a woman whose chance at love has come and gone, and though very little happens in the way of plot, the prose is gorgeous. Smart's narrative calls to mind some of the greatest modernists, as when her narrator, overwhelmed by the trivialities of her mundane life as a mother, sinks into a paralysis reminiscent of that of Eliot's Prufrock. ``After I had given birth to my first child, I felt time and space come whorling back into the empty space where it had lain. And Einsteinian demons came rushing to attack me with the terrible nature of the naked truth. But now I sit in country kitchens, discussing the minor discomforts of childbirth, and the domestic details of love.'' This is a somewhat bitter meditation on love and loneliness, but Smart's poetic prose makes it a book of high literary merit. (Dec.)