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