The Bookman's Tale
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Waiting at the airport of a Caribbean island for his homeward bound plane, Edward Ray—the bookman of the title—reflects on this week, which has changed his life. First, there was the cargo ship voyage to San Juan de Pinos, a journey shared by an odd assortment of fellow passengers whose lives impinge on his own, and who entertain one another—in the manner of the travellers in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales with stories of their own unusual experiences. Then there are his hopes for meeting Claudia—unseen for three decades—and for reviving the love they shared 30 years ago. Lastly there is Janet Tyner, a young woman who offers him a ride on the island and then gives him much more than he ever bargained for. The Bookman’s Tale is a lush and exotic novel, compact with the sights and smells of the Caribbean, of desire and passion, and with the mysterious ways of fate. It is a novel marked, as well, by the sensitive reflections of the Bookman himself, who, after his trip, has, perhaps, the most unusual tale of all those who made the journey.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's appropriate that in this novel's opening scene, the protagonist is watching images shift in a mirrorlike glass, because the book itself is much like an alluring kaleidoscope. Color, light, point of view mutate continually, luring the reader through a seamless narrative toward a stunning climax. Recently widowed Edward Ray, 58, publisher of a small Southern press, sails on a freighter to a Caribbean island in pursuit of a woman he hasn't seen in almost 30 years. As Ray wonders how his odyssey will end, he listens to various passengers relate, a la Chaucer, their ``Tales,'' some with no apparent ending, but all of them about how people lie to others and themselves. After Ray and the much younger woman he's just met witness a native fertility rite on the island, the two spend the night together. The next day he dips into her unpublished novel and his own Tale takes a jarring bounce. Temptingly enigmatic, this brief novel offers stylish, witty observations, with not a word wasted. Fleming ( Colonel Effingham's Raid ) wrote The Bookman's Tale , originally self-published, at the age of 87, three years before his death in 1989.
