NICKEL MOUNTAIN

"A Pastoral Novel," so subtitled and altogether free of those Sunlight Dialogues — actually closest in design and intent to Gardner's first book The Resurrection and once again a small town in the Catskills circumscribes whatever takes place here. . . the features of ordinary life — universals you might say — all moving to the same terminus, death. Thus we have Henry Soames of the Stop-Off diner, a lonely man with a bad heart in a hulk of a body run to fat — Henry who hires Callie to work for him, a girl of seventeen who proves to be pregnant by Willard, a young man who lights out quickly. Henry marries Callie who after a hard birth brings a boy into the world. Then there's their friend, Simon Bale, whose house bums down — his wife with it — maybe on purpose, and George who is steeped in bourbon, and Willard who comes home but the man from whom he hitches a ride dies on the road. "Things live and then they die," it's as matter of fact as that, engendering recognition — acceptance — hardly more. Sort of like Our Town, an old-fashioned tableau — and as plain as a pineboard coffin.