“A storm, a stroke, a death—this Antarctic expedition leaves a traumatic aftermath.” lean fall stand
TENDERNESS
MacLeod, Alison Bloomsbury (624 pp.) $24.49 | Sep. 14, 2021 978-1-63557-610-8 D.H. Lawrence, Jackie Kennedy, J. Edgar Hoover, Lionel Trilling, Lady Constance Chatterley, and a host of others meet in an inspired fusion of fact and fiction. To appreciate the delights of MacLeod’s masterful novel, which takes its title from the original title of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, one must have the patience to let it emerge from some dubious decisions about where to begin and how to unfold. These miscalculations recede as the full measure of the book becomes clear, about halfway through its more than 600 pages; MacLeod’s material might have provided another author with several novels, a few stories, and an essay or two. One plotline—“The Exile”—unfolds in Lawrence’s time, exploring the
“ever-expanding ‘club’ of the aggrieved” he created by modeling his characters on life. Another—“The Subversive”—tracks Jackie Kennedy in the run-up to the 1960 election. A fictional FBI agent photographs Jackie at the New York obscenity trial over Chatterley; he becomes entangled in Hoover’s plot to take down JFK while she meets Lionel Trilling to discuss the book. A third plotline covers the British obscenity trial in 1960; this section includes some lively fourth-wall–breaking and manages to nearly morph into a page-turner. But how closely is it based on the transcripts? Again and again, one feels eager to know where fact meets fiction—did the novelist Barbara Wall really write this wonderful, long letter to the defense attorney?—but the author is not inclined to tell us. “I have included letters and documents that have been faithfully reproduced; other such items have been invented, condensed, added to or modified for clarity,” she writes at the end of the book. If you want more, she continues, go back to the original sources. Call us lazy, but we might prefer more detailed notes. Nevertheless, there is much to enjoy here. At a time when sex is so often linked with exploitation and abuse, Lawrence’s central equation between physical passion and profound emotional connection is moving and nearly exotic. MacLeod’s interpretation of this gospel includes a lovely Lawrentian scene of sex in a library and a thought, attributed to Jackie Kennedy, about the power derived from sex: “the secret act of beholding the public, daily person—the lover, sanctioned or illicit—transformed in one’s presence into a private, raw spirit.” Seriously brilliant, seriously flawed, ambitious, and delicious.
LEAN FALL STAND
McGregor, Jon Catapult (288 pp.) $26.00 | Sep. 21, 2021 978-1-64622-099-1
A storm, a stroke, a death—this Antarctic expedition leaves a traumatic aftermath. Robert “Doc” Wright, a 33-year veteran of Antarctic expeditions, couldn’t have picked a worse time and place to have a stroke. Not only is he at a remote research station in Antarctica—“the nearest humans are about three hundred miles away. And they’re Russian”—he and his two inexperienced teammates are outside, far from shelter, and physically separate from one another when the storm begins. Why? Because one of the researchers wants to take some pictures, and they’ve separated in order to get the right shots: “Without someone in the frame there was no way to capture the scale of this place.” Confused, debilitated, embarrassed to call for help and admit that he’s let such a dangerous situation arise, Doc finds himself ultimately unable to save the life of one of the young researchers for whom he’s responsible. Another writer might have kept us in Antarctica, in the storm, sitting with these slender humans as they shiver and grimace against the enormity of nature. But not McGregor. In 20
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15 july 2021
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fiction
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kirkus.com
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