Wilcox's special fiefdom, Tula Springs, Louisiana, is so
sociologically spacious that by now he's able to ship in outsiders
and watch how they do there. Gretchen Dambar (pronounced "Danner")
is the second wife of a wealthy Tula Springs contractor in his 50s,
married merely five months after their unlikely (and unsober)
meeting in New Orleans. Gretchen is from the East, childless,
overeducated and underworked, and thoughtlessly rich - an uncle in
New England oversees her money, at least a million, which frees her
to view things financial as vulgar and unworthy of talk. She's a
vintage twit, in other words - and what comedy the ordinarily
hilarious Wilcox (North Gladiola, Miss Undine's Living Room)
musters here falls squarely on her twittiness. After being appalled
at the lack of "culture" in Tula Springs, she finds herself
accommodating by becoming pain-in-the-neck natural (". . .She was
not giving up on the idea of purchasing a cow. It wasn't the milk
and butter that interested her but the animal itself. To enter into
a relationship with something so basic and primeval was bound to do
her good. She really wished to care for something large and mute
like that"). Then, when nature becomes too unappealing, she turns
to social paranoia instead, suspecting her husband's household
staff of trying to do her, her husband, and maybe even each other
in. The ponytailed bachelor handyman, Leo Vogel, she especially
mistrusts, and their dance around each other is the main event
here. For all the indelibility of its completely eccentric yet - in
context - utterly believable characters, this is the first Wilcox
novel to drift sideways, punctuated only by blows of authorial
fate, as in E.M. Forster. It goes nowhere special, and some of the
satirical arrows shot Gretchen's way don't stick in because she's
such a pincushion already. But Wilcox, even at his most feckless,
as here, is still an unusually interesting novelist, never blind to
comedies and honors where they're not supposed to be. (Kirkus
Reviews)
The fourth novel in 4th Estate's Wilcox revival, a revival which
has been received with universal enthusiasm: 'With a keen eye for
the weirdness of ordinary lives and an easy style somewhere between
Armistead Maupin and Ann Tyler, Wilcox looks set for similar
success.' GQ Gretchen Peabody, fortyish and only just a bit dowdy,
has decided to abandon the comforts of Manhattan for a new home in
Tula Springs, Louisiana, having been swept off her feet by Frank
Dambar, a fetching widower she has happened upon in a New Orleans
souvenir shop. What she finds there, however, is a state of affairs
to which only James Wilcox could do justice. While Gretchen is
baffled by the small town's provincialism, it pales next to the
weird household her new husband has assembled, which includes a
handyman/mystic and his arthritic niece, and a stolid Teutonic
housekeeper determined to keep the first Mrs Dambar's memory alive.
Just as Gretchen begins to wonder whether so unusual a marriage has
been a mistake, fate again intrudes... Wilcox's brilliantly comic
vision is matched by a profoundly affecting regard for his
characters - qualities that mark his maturity as a novelist and
confirm his standing among the classic American humorists.
General
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