“One recovers of youth only what he can borrow from the young”: thus tritely reflects William Dubin, 56-year-old biographer of Lincoln, Mark Twain, and Thoreau, in this uncharacteristic and wrenching Malamud novel. Twenty-two-year-old Fanny Bick—wraparound-skirted and braless—comes into Dubin’s home as a maid, undresses and throws her yellow underpants at him. And Dubin reflects, with another homily, “Middle age … is when you pay for what you didn’t have or couldn’t do when you were young.”
Presently, Dubin treks off to Venice with Fanny, and we are introduced to the standard suffering Malamud character. Nothing good happens to Dubin in Venice: a series of comic tragedies prevents consummation (Dubin doesn’t actually have sex with her until page 208); Fanny vomits incessantly and has diarrhea; Dubin doctors her. When she is better, Dubin gets deflected in the city and arrives at their hotel late, to find Fanny being made love to on the floor by a gondolier.
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