The novel is existential or, more appropriately, elemental: Earth, air, fire and water — these are Bosco’s instruments along with the passions, fears and fantasies each of them evokes. The result is a strange kind of gothic romance about the human attempt to reach a real peace with wildness and wilderness without pacifying them, subduing them, paving them over. It is a more modest undertaking than “Malicroix,” yet full of small beauties, like a multifaceted gem. A grove of poplars is described like this: “Bunched tightly together against the daylight, their leaves formed a dark hedge. Some grew up almost from the level of the water in the shallower pools.

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Persons: Bosco, I’ve, James Galvin's, “, frustratingly, Huck Finn, ”, he’s Locations: American