DINGLEY FALLS

by Michael Malone ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 1980

Malone (The Delectable Mountains, Painting the Roses Red) remains a talented but skittery writer who can't quite seem to commit himself or marshal his forces: here he tackles a Peyton-Place-ish situation with sturdy professionalism but feels the need to hedge his bets, undercutting the central material with heavy-going satire. Dingley Falls is a Republican, largely WASP town in eastern Connecticut, one not all that well adapted to 1976 but doing its best. The problems of the age are mirrored in Beanie Abernathy, one of the town's preeminent matrons who, having to squire around a poet named Richard Rage after a local reading, falls prey to his carnal charms and promptly runs off with him, leaving her lawyer husband. Also, on a larger scale, there's timeliness in the top-secret existence, just outside town, of a government project working to develop virological warfare germs (a number of Dingley Falls folks have died accidentally as a result). And Malone neatly bridges the soap-opera and the social issues with the character of Judith ""Sorrow"" Haig, town postmistress and wife of the police chief, who bears the sins of the town and the burden of on-going plot. So far, so good: Malone has the formula down securely; the read is long but always smooth. But there's also that element of hectic satire constantly scrabbling around in back: names like Richard Rage, the Grabaski brothers, Bob Eagerly, Justin Tom, John Dick, and Colonel Harry; the scene where the Dingley Falls matrons are gratuitously plopped down into an arty New York loft party; the Doctor Strangelove-isms over at the research installation. Not brightly funny in themselves, these elements seem to mock the conventions of the very novel Malone is otherwise writing. And this having-it-both-ways (half John O'Hara, half John Irving, neither half up to snuff) inspires very little confidence as a reader progresses. Unsatisfying work, then, from a hard-working but still-unfocused novelist.

Pub Date: May 1, 1980

ISBN: 1402239343

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1980

Categories: FICTION