THE MARMOT DRIVE

by John Hersey ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 9, 1953

A new book by John Hersey is news- he fits into no predictable pigeonhole. The Marmot Drive is as different from The Wall as that was from A Bell for Adano and yet each succeeds completely in creating its own illusion. The Italian village of Adano- the Warsaw ghetto- and now the Connecticut village-live in his pages. Personally, I think the Connecticut village comes off worst. It would almost seem- in 1953-to hold virtually intact the psychological twists of Salem of witchcraft days. The title refers to the woodchuck hunt which provides the frame of a story in which Eben Avered's girl friend Hester, arrives at a sharply accented and individualized portrait of the western Connecticut community and the family from which Eben springs. An unsavory portrait at best. There's Eben's father, really the central figure, head selectman on a compromise election and actively disliked or suspect by virtually all his fellow villagers. And yet towards the end, Hester fancies that perhaps it is the father not the son she loves.... Then there's his mother, from whom all vitality seems to have been drained..... And the villagers,- Coit, lusty bully, still competing with Eben; Anak Welch, Eben's advocate at the start in the project of the drive- but quick to turn against him when it fails; there's Mrs. Tuller, the schoolmarm of two generations, and her slightly effeminate husband; there's ancient Aunt Dorcas, with her phobia about birds; there are the Leamings, whose sadism crops out in unexpected violence; there's Pliny Forward, whose pompous intellectualism provides another butt; these and others combine to pillory Matthew Avered, to turn the smouldering resentments against him when deliberate misinterpretation of an incident gives them the chance. Not a pretty picture of town politics and jealousies, wrong motivations and contradiction. And certainly neither stodgy Eben nor oversexed Hester emerges as superior in any way to the ""natives"" on whom they look down. There's an underlying bitterness here that robs this of any pretense of being a nostalgic look at rural living. Almost it might be defined as a modern prose Spoon River Anthology and it carries something of that impact.

Pub Date: Nov. 9, 1953

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1953

Categories: FICTION