The Maze at Windermere (Large type / large print)

Five Stories Of Newport

Gregory Blake Smith's 2018 novel, "The Maze at Windermere" offers a strong sense of an American place as it consists of five separate stories set in Newport, Rhode Island from colonial times in 1692 to 2011 in the 21st century. Each of the five stories has its own separate characters and each is told in a remarkable voice idiomatic for the period. The stories also share broad common themes, the stuff of literature, including the nature of love in many forms, sexuality, acceptance and rejection, deceit, and marriage and money.

The individual stories begin with the contemporary tale of a fading tennis professional who becomes involved with a wealthy but physically handicapped young heiress. A story set in 1896, (the only part of the book recounted in the third person) is a story of wealth and tells of a middle-aged gay man who tries to marry a wealthy widow. The next story, set in 1863 in the middle of the Civil War, focuses on historical characters, particularly Henry James, whose writings and life overshadow the entire book. The fourth story is set in 1778 during the Revolutionary War and involves a British office who tries to seduce the buxom daughter of a wealthy Jewish merchant. The final and earliest story is set in a Quaker community in 1698. The protagonist is a 15-year old girl whose father and mother have died and who is charged with taking care of herself, her younger sister, the family home, and the family slaves.

Each of these five stories has the stuff for a full novel and would require concentration on the part of the reader. Smith's novel, however, runs the five stories together. Up until the last section of the book, the work is arranged in a fixed progression of scenes in reverse chronological order from one story to the next (i,e, 2011, 1896, 1863, 1778, 1698), Each story is taken to a climactic point only to have the scene shift to the following story. When the five scenes are exhausted, the cycle begins again to be repeated until the final, more wandering section of the book.

With its shifting scenes and many characters, the book is hard to follow at first. But I found the work gradually drawing me in. The format invites the reader to seek out similarities and differences in the stories over time, in the characters, their ambitions, and their fates, all against the background of Newport which remains the setting amid changes over 300 years.

The stories do not work equally well and not all scenes are on the same level of inspiration. Some readers see the tone of the book set by the contemporary section involving the fading tennis player. I was fascinated most, however, by the story of the James family, both for itself and because it pervades the book in it discussion of change and constancy in life over time and of the relationship between life and art. The James family, Henry Sr. William, Alice, and Wilkie, all are characters, but the focus is on the novelist Henry as a young man of twenty with the ambition to become a writer. As the novel would have it, young Henry becomes momentarily involved with a young woman. Henry comes to see that he is largely devoid of strong sexual passions. Rather than pursuing love, he devotes himself to close observation and understanding of people and to writing and bringing to life what he sees. Many of the scenes in Smith's book offer allusions to Henry James' writings, particularly the early work "Daisy Miller" and the late lengthy novel, "The Wings of the Dove". James's writings and observations seem to work as a gloss on the stories that Smith brings to his readers, and they help bring understanding to people and places in a thoughtful way that suspends the ever -present tendency toward moral judgment.

Here are two examples from the Henry James character that illuminate the novel. In the first example, young Henry reflects upon the spiritual emphasis in the writings of his father, Henry, Sr. The young novelist agrees with his father about the dangers of ego and self: yet he finds the way to understanding in the physical things of the world itself rather than in idealism. Thus, in the novel, Henry says:

"Is not the world in all its rich progress a paradise of interest? Who would willingly live in a world where the peaches hand year-round in perfect ripeness upon their perfect boughs? It is in the gradations of behavior, in the shades of our motivations, in their inversions and variations, in the slow ripening and the quicker rotting, where lie education and insight, and a kind of artistic delight."

In a subsequent passage, Henry discusses his failed relationship with Alice and how this failure helped him to understand his task as a writer and observer of life. Henry writes:

"It is something I have difficulty reconciling, this sense I have that the hundreds of millions of us who breathe upon the earth are each a unique flame, that we are each uniquely composed within the caskets of our bodies and our minds, that each has an experience of the world as different as that of a fishwife's from a foundryman's, and yet we all live the same life (millionaire, artist, soldier, slave), we each of us strive to understand who we are, why we are here, to love and be loved, and that for all that striving, we are each of us lost in the mystery of our own heart."

These and similar passages in the book show a writer, Gregory Blake Smith, who is attuned to the mystery of life and art in their diversity and who is able to share this sense of mystery and beauty with his readers through the particulars of Newport, Henry James, and an array of characters through time. I found "The Maze at Windermere" thoughtful and moving.

Robin Friedman