Books, Arts & Manners: This Little World

The Enigma of Arrival, A Novel, by V. S. Naipaul (Random, 354 pp., $17.95)

History and the discontinuities of history lie heavily on the landscape in this book. Set in a rich Wiltshire farming valley, only walking distance from Salisbury Plain with its barrows and tumuli and remains of Stonehenge, the story begins with long observations of the local flora, which are as branching and organic as the vegetal life they describe. Little by little, and layer by layer, the accumulated natural and human effects on the land emerge, as do—even more slowly—the lives of the current inhabitants. At first, all this seems a mere evocation of sentimental and literary associations. But soon we are led by the narrator past surface illusions into a profound experience of modernity.

RR

About the Author

Robert Royal

Robert Royal is editor in chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.

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The Enigma of Arrival, A Novel, by V. S. Naipaul (Random, 354 pp., $17.95)

History and the discontinuities of history lie heavily on the landscape in this book. Set in a rich Wiltshire farming valley, only walking distance from Salisbury Plain with its barrows and tumuli and remains of Stonehenge, the story begins with long observations of the local flora, which are as branching and organic as the vegetal life they describe. Little by little, and layer by layer, the accumulated natural and human effects on the land emerge, as do—even more slowly—the lives of the current inhabitants. At first, all this seems a mere evocation of sentimental and literary associations. But soon we are led by the narrator past surface illusions into a profound experience of modernity.

RR

About the Author

Robert Royal

Robert Royal is editor in chief of The Catholic Thing and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century.