cover image November - V665

November - V665

Janet Hobhouse. Vintage Books USA, $6.95 (198pp) ISBN 978-0-394-74665-4

An intelligent composer abandoned by his actress wife and young daughter, Zachariah Quine falls into a state of gloom. Hoping that ""going home'' will lift his depression, he travels to London, where he spent part of his youth and where his brother and family now live. Instead he becomes even more confused and takes up with Anne, a divorced Englishwoman who drinks and drinks, trying to forget her past. After they fall out, Zach moves to Florence, where his sister lives. This trip, too, fails to provide him with release from his moodiness, and he comes to understand that everyone in his family feels as down as he doesexcept that they are able to find solace in their work. Hobhouse, author of Dancing in the Dark, makes it difficult to sympathize with a character utterly lacking in self-esteem and unable to take himself in hand. (November)