Chapters (19)

The second act shows the first to be preamble, and overlong, though I don’t especially mind that. It’s just that Stafford is good when she’s spinning story, to which the latter half of the book gives itself entirely. It’s Wharton, it’s James, it’s soap opera: appointments and assignations, secrets and surprises. Such is my affection for Boston Adventure that I’m fond even of its most leaden gestures, like the fact that Miss Pride has a cat locked up in her private room at home, an animal she refuses to show to Sonie. The cat’s name? Mercy. I’ve not even mentioned that Pride’s niece is called Hopestill!

This can all be forgiven. Stafford is aiming for Proust because she knows how lovely it can be to be in his company. She’s attentive to what language can accomplish: A teacher has the smell of “yeast, sachet, and a slight mildew.” We recognize what she shows us, as when Sonie meets her newborn brother: “I longed to hold him myself and to kiss his bawling, cockled face, and to bestow upon him all the tender services that were the right of anything so supremely helpless.” And she can be wicked, as in this observation of Miss Pride’s: “Bending over as if to inspect the plate of lemon slices, she said in a much lower voice, ‘I think you should be more sparing of lip rouge.’”

I’m talking about simple pleasure, and sometimes that’s all I ask of a novel. If I tell you Boston Adventure is a diversion, I know how rare that is. The novel of ideas is spoken of as distinct from the novel that entertains. What if one book attempted both? Sonie gets to the title city but does Sonie save herself? Late in the book, she tells us of the panic that settles over her in an empty house: “It was a fear I could describe only approximately as a fear of myself.” With her slender body of work, Stafford is one of those writers I wish had left us more. Then I read her words, and am reminded that what we have is enough.

BOSTON ADVENTURE

BOOK ONE

Hotel Barstow

ONE