POSSESSION

Delbanco goes on writing his perhaps thanklessly individualistic books, which are not so much private as confined. He is a special taste who elicits very contradictory reactions. In Possession there is less of his "rich" or is it "precious" prose with only a few words like "parodic" or "ephemerid"; there's a homelier simplicity with occasional lines that lilt—"Still, paradise is warm. It is a stepped-up version of September." No one has ever questioned Delbanco's dedication to language or his concern with cankerous family relationships, most strongly evident in Fathering. Now a trio, a little reminiscent of Ethan Frome, are together/apart in the chill of lovelessness, possession, advanced age, and Vermont. The novel passes a day with the leonine Jonah who has spent his entire life in a "holding action" against the outside world, keeping his wife and sister victims of his "fighting riled" bullydom. His sister Harriet, now 81, has always been as shriveled as a lemon squeezed once too often. His second wife, Maggie, half his years when he married her at 48, became estranged after the crib death of one child and she left in order to free her other son Ian, her "final lover," as well as her vital self. Years later she returns for this day at Jonah's request, but during its course the whole past surfaces in uncomfortable takes, solidified by the accuracy of insight and detail with which the novel is caulked. These give the novel its strength and austerity even if it's as claustral as an hour spent in a root cellar.