KNUTE, AND KNUTE AGAIN

by William Warner ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 30, 1987

A first novel--of boyhood recollected from young adulthood--that flaps and flaps its wings but never flies. An auspicious start--the story of how Knute (pronounced Newt) Pescadoor, in fourth grade, broke a girl's arm by ""accident""--goes on too long, declining into an unballasted school-days anecdote. And from that point, the novel continues to grope for its subject, making a half-rushed, expository side-journey into the immigrant his-story of Knute's family, and another into the 1940's-flavored story of his parents' courtship and marriage. But to what end? The adult Knute, though sketched in here and there, fails to emerge with compelling or vivid enough weight or presence to make the reader able to care much about the childhood he inexplicably mulls over with such fixation and sometimes flat-footedness (""What had Melanie really thought about him? That had certainly been a major question of his teenage years""). The narrator himself talks about the problem of narrative focus, saying that, as he was ""writing"" the book, ""It seemed to stretch on from one episode I didn't feel any need to write to a next episode that looked to be more of less the same. . .How could I expect anyone to want to read it?"" Such literary candor is disarming, but not much help. The book remains frustrated by its themelessness. High points, which might have breathed more freely as short stories, are a high-pitched quarrel between the bookish Knute and his frustrated mother, during which, grimly challenging one another, they take turns pitching the affluent family's many possessions (the oft-absent father runs a chain of successful restaurants) out the window; and a long game of strip poker between Knute and his cousin Melanie that begins to take on an inner life of its own and gain fictional depth. In general, though, an earnest but wheel-spinning and conceptually unformed effort that might better be entitled ""Knute again, and again, and again. . .

Pub Date: April 30, 1987

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Algonquin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1987

Categories: FICTION