All of us who write for a living do things from time to time that don’t work. These stumbles—experimental toe-stubs—do not, thank God, leave indelible blemishes on our careers or stamp us with failure’s mark. They are easier to absorb when one writes for a daily newspaper and one’s missteps vanish in the weekly recycling-box pickup; they are harder when one writes novels. But the rule for both journalist and novelist is the same: nothing ventured, nothing gained and one does better the next time out, which I’m sure Lauren B. Davis, an immensely talented writer, is going to do.
Her second novel, The Radiant City, should have worked; a lot of it does work—impressively. But the central story, the narrative, the plot, does not make it, the reason being that her central characters don’t make it. Her problem, I think, is that she created people she never got to know. They remain strangers from a world beyond her grasp, speaking lines their personas don’t...
Michael Valpy is a journalist and author. Through a long career at The Globe and Mail, he served as foreign correspondent, national political columnist, member of the editorial board, and deputy managing editor before leaving to teach in 2010.
Advertisement
Advertisement