THE STRAY

by Betsy James Wyeth ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 15, 1980

An oversized (7 3/4 x 9 5/8) volume with adept pen drawings disposed throughout--and a story that's a loose, uninspired amalgam of all too many fancies and conceits. For a third of the way, we consort with the people-like animal denizens of the Ford--notably the unnamed (presumably) fox narrator, his sober, mannerly pal McCragan, and irrepressible maverick Lynch, the stray of the title. (Best episode: McCragan's crafty rescue of Lynch from initiation into the fundamentalist-church-like Grange.) A fox is found decapitated, there are rumors of hunters loose in the Land to the North; and a second stray, piglet Den Den, grows up and wins the heart of the Estate Manager for Baron deface, lord of the Land to the South. Also on the fringes of the story and the Ford are still another stray, the dog Boom Boom; a gull who comes and goes in a submarine, Admiral Del; and a pack of gluttonous, tippling pigs whose leader, Big Karl, tells dire tales of one Sour Kraut, a thwarted social-climber ravaging the countryside. But the first intimation that all of this will somehow come together occurs when Lynch and the narrator happen upon a meeting in the forest between Black-Powder Andre, ""alias Baron deFâce,"" and an unidentified blackmailer soliciting his backing for ""the Ambassadorship"" (who will indeed turn out to be Sour Kraut). And how it comes together is the tortuous balance of the story--which winds up, as arbitrarily as it advances, with all hands but Lynch taking off in a full-masted (flying) Airship. You could call this complex fabrication inventive, maybe, but you couldn't call it imaginative--and even with three maps, it's a chore to follow.

Pub Date: Nov. 15, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION