JOHN BROWN'S SOUL

More than a whiff of Philip Wylie for a novel which combines a combustible situation with some talk which burrows freely, feverishly through sex, psychiatry, religion. John Brown, an architect, and a self-contained character, learns after fourteen years of a substantially happy marriage that he's a homicidal killer when he blanks out under alcohol and emotion and shoots a man, attacks his wife. Cleared by the police, but not by Peg-his wife, he turns himself over to an analyst, and on his couch of pain traces his violence back to his love for his mother, his hatred of his father. After a brief bout with liquor again, he gets further help from A.A., and from a monk- a Father Stark, and finally accepting the dissolution of his marriage, he goes to Reno where he is now ready for the love of another woman. A fairly glossy glossing over of a few theories and some very fundamental feelings, this is uninhibited, unimpressive.