Secret Agent Man: Essays

Singer (Underground Fugue), a creative writing professor at Denison University, delivers an evocative collection of personal essays focused on themes of trust and deception. The title entry sets the tone, describing Singer’s complicated relationship with her father, who emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Palestine in 1940 and then the United States after WWII. Though he ostensibly worked as a management consultant, Singer came to believe he was involved in espionage, and took great pleasure in the fantasy (“I wanted him to stay the way he’d always been, the father of my childhood, as dashing and invulnerable as Secret Agent Man John Drake”). Blurred lines between fantasy and reality also animate “God’s Eye,” a dissection of Singer’s relationship with the man she thought she’d marry after college, and “Call It Rape,” which examines questions of consent by linking coercive sexual encounters in Singer’s own life to a rape trial she served on as a juror in Utah. The collection ends where it begins: “Counterclockwise” returns to Singer’s father, this time as his life nears its end, with the author questioning whether she can trust her memories to keep him alive. With a gossamer touch, Singer thoroughly probes the boundaries between truth and fiction. The results are haunting. (June)