Deep, dark truths revealed

A few nights ago I was at a dinner party at which all those present knew each other far better than I knew them. For what seemed an interminable time their sole topic of conversation was the tempestuous relationship of a couple of whom I had never even heard. The story, in as far as I could piece it together, was fascinating; but with its oblique references to long-past events and to people merely indicated by their first names, it also exasperated me. I had the same experience during my reading of this novel.

When we meet one of the two main characters, Lewis, he is looking down on a lake from his high perch on a builder’s ladder. All at once he suffers a hallucination of an arm raised out of the lake, a forefinger pointing. Subsequently there are references to a Manny and a Carl. But it is only by dribs and drabs that one collects the data necessary to understand the importance of the pointing forefinger and of the two men.