Willow Temple
by Donald Hall
Mariner $130
Donald Hall, who's better known for his poetry, here offers 12 stories (six of which appeared in The Ideal Bakery, published in 1987) focusing on divorce, adultery and neglect. His style is reminiscent of Alice Munro and William Maxwell in his mastery of form and ability to trace the emotional fault lines connecting generations. Set mostly in his native New England, he favours delicate descriptions of caved-in farmhouses, abandoned mills and people who stumble into tragedy. From Willow Temple is the story of a child's witness of her mother's adultery and the loss that underlies it. Three stories feature one character, David Bardo, at crucial junctures of his life, beginning as a child drawn to his parents' 'cosy adult coven of drunks' and growing into a young man whose intense first affair leads to a lifelong taste for ardour and betrayal. Hall is deliberate and wistful, moving his characters slowly through time and memory, and lingering nostalgically on the past.