Seldom do I stick with a book that I’m not enjoying until the bitter end, but I did in this case.  Afterall, it was only 251 pages, had won the National Book Award in 1957, and had been lauded by one of my favorite contemporary literary critics, Peter Orner.  So despite finding it dull and often confusing, I read it to the end.  Sadly, I found few redeeming features in having done so.

The book jumps around in alternate brief chapters between the major characters, Walter McKee, his wife Lois, his grandson Gordon, his father-in-law Tom Scanlon, his neighbor a psychiatrist Dr. Leopold Lehman and Lehman’s companion Paula (or was it Paul?) Kahler, and most interestingly a boyhood friend of McKee’s, Gordon Boyd.  This cast of characters are all attending a bull fight somewhere in Mexico, and as the action in the bullring unfolds, Morris takes us back into each person’s life to moments of crisis and intersection.  The big event appeared to be a kiss that Gordon Boyd planted on Lois Scanlon in their small Nebraska town before her fiance, McKee had ever done so.  That seems a thin reed upon which to build all of these life stories.

I tried to find some reviews of the book from the 1950’s but no luck, so I’m left to try to interpret the action myself and find that I’m just not motivated to work that hard.  Nobody hits a home run every time but this book, perhaps the one that brought Morris the most attention due to the National Book Award, might account for why he is so little read these days.