Big kiss, bye-bye

Bennett (Checkout 19) serves up a striking novel about a writer's retreat into solitude in the aftermath of a love affair. Having relocated from London to the English countryside, the unnamed middle-aged narrator ruminates on the past, beginning with memories of her former lover Xavier, a "jetsetting" and unscrupulous private banker. She thinks back on the keepsakes she left behind, such as the dozen roses she left wilting in a vase, and tries to remember the sound of his voice. As time goes on, the past begins to intrude in physical form, including with the arrival of a package of books from her first publisher that contains a handwritten note from her former English teacher, whose voice comes back to her from three decades ago, prompting her to reflect on the way in which the past steadfastly refuses to die: "half-buried distorted things have a habit of rearing their noxious malformed heads again." Bennett ranges freely in register and tone, from passionate desire evocative of Ulysses's Molly Bloom to a measured treatise on violence in cinema. Through it all, the narrator seeks to form a picture of herself apart from what she imagines others think of her: "I have removed myself so that I can think of you which I cannot do while you think of me," she reflects, to no one in particular. It's an intellectual tour de force. Agent: Melanie Jackson, Melanie Jackson Agency. (Oct.)

A writer recounts the dissolution of a relationship through the lens of her experience, not her art. When the novel opens, the narrator and her erstwhile lover, Xavier, are already estranged. Xavier is much older, and the last time she'd seen him, three months earlier, she'd said she didn't want to kiss him, citing his age. Xavier cut off the relationship. He will have to find someone "more suitable," he'd said in an email, and furthermore, her most recent book, which she'd given him at lunch, was "some kind of HELL." They haven't communicated since then, and the speaker, though so hurt by Xavier's reaction to her book that she describes herself as "winded," reacts to his rejection with equanimity. "He might be old, and he really is very old now," she says, "but that doesn't stop him from hurting and wanting." The rest of this languid, sensuous book--the term novel is too prescriptive for a project that dismisses all impetus toward narrative progression--is very much focused on this sense of wanting. The speaker's identity as a successful writer is a central point throughout (she receives communications from her publisher; her former A-level English teacher contacts her to say he's read her first two novels), yet she doesn't view her world through an artist's lens, but rather with the immediacy of a body's experience. Former lovers, including Xavier, are detailed with the same kind of transcendent sensitivity that is employed in a nonerotic context to describe bouquets of flowers, the logistics of ocean swimming, conversations with friends in the backs of cars, the beauty of a well-made fire. The speaker's exquisite sensibility, and her assured sense of her own perceptions, provides a throughline for the pastiche of scenes, dreams, and conversations that make up this book. Where their lack of continuity might discourage some readers, the treatment of Xavier as he loops through the book's past, present, and--perhaps--future reminds us that the goal of art is sometimes to see clearly and specifically what is there to be seen, with no duty to dictate its progress or its outcome. A languorously unfurling novel that rewards the reader's attention and time. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.