Seaward - Hardcover

Leithauser (Equal Distance, 1984; Hence, 1988) peers uncertainly into the more remote corners of the middle-class soul- -in this sadly prosaic account of grief and desire. Terry Seward is a 40-ish Washington lawyer who sees his dead wife one night in a Virginia swamp. This is not really the sort of thing he's equipped for: the son of an insurance actuary, Terry manages to temper the imagination of a bureaucrat with all the spontaneity of a mortician. Since most of his Washington friends seem as embarrassed by Terry's revelation as he is himself, he goes afield to Baltimore to seek the advice of Curly Kopp, a lunatic pet-shop keeper who was Terry's freshman roommate at Princeton. Kopp's willingness to accept the reality of Terry's vision encourages him to reconsider the state of things and helps him to imagine the existence of worlds he had never dreamt of. He drops out of his law firm and sets off on what soon becomes recognizable as a pilgrimage to no particular place. Leithauser is very good at setting his scenes, and he manages to make Terry's disorientation all the more palpable by enclosing it within a conventional narrative that is largely inhabited by stereotypes (the cute coeds, the macho law partner, etc.), but there is a disconcerting laxity to the plot--as if the author were as embarrassed as Terry himself is about the mysticism inherent in the story, and had determined to rein it in as much as he could. This is all the more disappointing because those scenes that deal directly with Terry's vision carry a tremendous power. Ultimately, they end up buried beneath the chitchat of a thoroughly formulaic novel that they should have transfigured. An honest failure by a true master: had Leithauser only tightened (and shortened) the plot he could have hit the mark, but he dawdles his way through and loses his chance. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The rational underpinnings of modern life collide with the inexplicable in this accomplished and intriguing story of an ordinary man who sees a ghost. Poet and novelist Leithauser ( Equal Distance ; Hence ) depicts Washington, D.C., communications attorney Terry Seward, a self-described "solid" individual who undergoes a watershed experience when he witnesses the spectral return of his wife Betsy, who drowned in an accident. A badly shaken Terry is forced to reassess his assumptions about both himself and his understanding of human existence. Relying on the friendships of two men, his pragmatic fellow attorney Adam Mikolajczak and his eccentric former Princeton roommate Curly Kopp, Terry grapples with various hypotheses to explain his paranormal experience and decide how to respond to it. Through this examination he gains new insight into his relationships with Adam and Curly, with his parents, sister, niece and even with the late Betsy. Leithauser fashions a compelling portrait of his protagonist, showing him from a variety of perspectives. Supporting characters, too, are rendered with convincing precision and color, and the carefully constructed narrative is quietly gripping throughout. More a meditation than a ghost story, Leithauser's tale avoids mystical cliches, focusing less on supernatural spectacle than on the greater miracles of quotidian existence. BOMC alternate.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.