Books: Moving Beyond Words

But no emotional crisis is really required. It's the simple detail of Howie's day-to-day measured existence that propels this book forward. It's enough that King etches so expertly the fine filigree of the man's resignation and pain, his awareness of the "burden of my dullness"--which the reader understands is just the world's inability to find its way into his steady, lustrous stream of consciousness. At one point, trying to muster sympathy for Sylvia's addiction, he recollects his own druggy days. "For a moment, I recall those spectacular arcs of time when I was the solitary pinprick of sensation in the whole wide world, the one heroic lawbreaker in our dutiful universe."

And the ha-ha? As students of English gardening will know, that's a man-made landscape feature, a trench dug to conceal a fence in order to preserve the view. The nuns have one on the grounds of their convent, which Howie loves to approach at perilous speeds on his tractor mower. We go right to the edge with him, and even if we're not always laughing, we're glad to be along for the ride.