A SAFE PLACE

This is a work of minor talent (one could easily imagine it will develop) and more pronounced mystery where ""Everything swirled around a central vacancy, the enigma, the defeating puzzle."" One of those crypto-curios which take place in a curtained world and still more enclosed after-world -- the safe place of the title? Anyway, within a relatively few pages certain things do happen which give you a few props without explaining much of anything: Sybil's husband dies suddenly and she -- having attempted suicide -- is put away; Sam, their son, finds himself in the company of their old char Geraldine who is attached to a craggy old Communist, perhaps a spy, whom together they bury at sea. Along with the reader who muses at all the hopelessness which hangs in the air, winces, and wishes for a greater clarification of all these fleshless, bloodless people in a void.