Tony and Susan

When Susan begins to read her surgeon-husband's novel, Nocturnal Animals, of which Tony is the main character, she has a hard time remembering where life ends and the novel begins

In this intriguing accomplished novel, the author of Camden's Eyes and several works of literary criticism combines a stark take on a film noir theme with a postmodern meditation on the act of reading. Susan Morrow is surprised to hear from her former husband Edward, who has written a novel entitled Nocturnal Animals , which he asks her to read. The main character in the novel is Tony Hastings, who, in a late-night drive with his family from Ohio en route to Maine takes a detour down a dark road into death, confused grief and vengeance. As Susan becomes involved in Tony's journey, she relives her past life with Edward and reviews her present one with her current husband, Arnold--both men she could never "read" the way she reads Tony. She finds herself asking two questions: how will Tony survive his trip's terrible events, and what sort of a man has Edward become? And because Edward is "real" and Tony is fictional, only her speculations about Tony will be answered to her satisfaction. Written in contrasting styles--Tony's account in sharp prose that ricochets in unexpected directions, Susan's musings in fluid passages of emotional and sensory perceptions--the novel's two stories mesh into a credible, suspenseful narrative. Wright infuses this excellent work with resonating observations about the reality of violence, where the loss of humanity is the price of revenge, and the "reality" of fiction and its place and power in day-to-day life. BOMC and QPB alternates.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Twenty-five years ago, Susan Sheffield divorced her ineffectual husband Edward to marry heart surgeon Arnold Morrow. Now that Edward's asked her to read the novel he's finished, she's pulled into it in disturbing ways other readers may not fully share. Not that Edward's novel, Nocturnal Animals, isn't disturbing in its own right as it unfolds the story of Tony Hastings, an Ohio professor--like real-life novelist Wright (The Morley Mythology, 1977, etc.)--whose trip to his Maine summer home with his wife Laura and daughter Helen is disastrously interrupted by a carload of louts who force him off the road, separate him from Laura and Helen, drive him for miles, and abandon him alone in the middle of backwoods Pennsylvania. Lt. Bobby Andes, leading the search for the women the following day, inevitably find them raped and murdered, and Tony sinks into an apathetic fog from which he never fully emerges--despite a return to his job, a few fumbling attempts at resuming his sex life, and two calls from Andes asking him to come back east for a police lineup. The first time, infuriatingly, Tony can't make an identification, but the second time, he does identify a suspect, setting in motion the engine of his final calamitous return to life. Reading Tony's adventures over three nights, Susan feels herself slipping imperceptibly into an identification with his sense of death- in-life, reviewing her life since Edward--her first adulterous fling with Arnold, her brisk parting from Edward, the hollowness of her careful life since--and feeling uncomfortably called to account. Because the melodramatic novel-within-a-novel is so much more arresting than the subtle, ambiguous frame story, even readers who find Susan's reactions more fervently invoked than convincingly demonstrated will find much of interest here. Try throwing away the rind and eating the pulp. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

By framing a crime story within a domestic novel, Wright, an English professor and author of three previous novels, dissolves the fragile civility that often conceals violence. He also scrutinizes the institution of marriage, considers the nature of memory, and documents the potential impact of one's choices, both large and small--all without sacrificing pace. At Edward Sheffield's request, Susan Morrow reads his first novel, Nocturnal Animals , in which an impulsive change of plan delivers Tony Hastings and his family into the hands of strangers who terrorize them. Passages from Sheffield's novel alternate between Susan's memories of Sheffield (her ex-husband), to details of her current marriage, to her speculations about the writer's and the reader's obligations. By counterpoising the eroding compromises of Susan's daily life with the sufferings of the Hastings family, Wright demonstrates that macho posturing, cruelty, and the refusal of individual responsibility infect both sexes and all classes. Highly recommended.
- Jane S. Baker man, Indiana State Univ., Terre Haute
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.