A Hole In The Universe (Broché)

An ex-con struggling to find and hold his place in the world. A young drug runner desperate to keep her coked-out, pregnant mother afloat. A lonely woman fading into middle age and yearning for one last chance at connection. Welcome to the world of Mary McGarry Morris -- and what a world it is. Richly atmospheric, bristling with dialogue, so tightened with suspense it threatens to snap. Author of four previous novels, including the Oprah-approved Songs in Ordinary Time, Morris is a master at sympathetic portraits of those clinging to the peripheries of society. And nowhere is her talent more evident than in her extraordinary new novel, A Hole in the Universe.

Here Morris gives us Gordon Loomis, a gentle giant of a man, coming back to his hometown after a 25-year stretch in prison for a crime another teenager talked him into: a break-in during which a young pregnant woman was smothered to death. Gordon never questions his guilt, never harbors notions of justice or forgiveness and in fact never hankers for anything more than what he's known before prison. But laying down roots again in his old neighborhood isn't easy. The streets have gone to seed, taken over by a nasty band of predatory drug dealers. Employers turn away from him -- or turn on him. His brother Dennis, a respectable professional who never lived down Gordon's sentence, is aghast at Gordon's complacency, his polite refusal to strive for something more. "But you've got to want things!" Dennis rails, pushing Gordon toward a new job, a new condo and an old, smitten acquaintance, Delores.

But Gordon knows that wanting is what's dangerous. Holding his life in stasis, however, is as impossible as keeping the drug dealers out of his neighborhood, and, despite his best efforts, Gordon's stubborn integrity keeps forging connections to other people. Jada, the young, unwilling drug runner, snatches Gordon's sandwiches and money, yet he finds himself watching out for her. Mrs. Jukas, the elderly, waspish lady next door, angrily refuses to let Gordon in her house for fear he'll kill her, but Gordon still fetches her groceries and tends her yard. Even Delores, a woman like the last forlorn chocolate in the candy box, can't be kept at a safe distance, and he's helpless against the way her love and belief in him start to braid their lives together.

Morris has a rare talent for crafting indelible portraits of small-town life, making you hear and smell and see the place so clearly you could map it with your eyes closed. This is a world of food stamps and broken windows, scrubby grass and boom boxes and smashed-down hopes. But it's also a place of energy, "blind and unstoppable" as a wild animal. In Morris's universe, goodness is as scarce as requited love, but no one stops trying for it. Jada insists she's a good person even as she steals and lies and runs wild. Dennis clings to his hard-won respectability while cheating on his wife with a pretty young realtor. Only Gordon is hard on himself, refusing redemption, asking, "What price had he paid? Two lives were lost, yet he still had his. The emptiness and the lost years could not have been the true punishment. Unless it was this constant dread like static in his soul. No. There's more, more to come."

Still, slowly and cautiously, Gordon inches his way into a modestly content life. Selfless and shy, a man who appears to be "scrubbing his own shadow," he manages to find jobs and keep company with a woman he's beginning to need. But, even so, he still can't escape the forces circling him like a posse, coming closer and closer, in for the kill. His very integrity is the noose about his neck. On the job, his foiling of an arson attempt gets him fired. His trying to protect his brother's faltering marriage not only incurs Dennis's wrath but nearly ends the union altogether. As in Greek tragedy, there's a chorus of accusing voices swirling around Gordon -- strangers and employers who can't forget the long-ago murder and want to make sure Gordon doesn't forget it either. Inevitably, out of the desperation of the neighborhood, another crime happens, shattering all that has gone before.

It isn't just these big events, the topnotch suspense, the expert plotting that make Morris such a superb storyteller -- it's the small heroics that resonate and break your heart. Delores cooks a meal for Gordon, and her affection in the face of his seeming lack of interest is genuine and touching. Jada steals a puppy and then lavishes it with love right up until the moment the real owner comes back and angrily reclaims his pet. And Gordon quietly cleans the trash from his neighbor's porch even as she hurls abuse at him. These little shining moments, and Morris's undeniable compassion for and intuitive understanding of her characters' lives, make us know and care about these people, too.

"The dead cannot forgive, and the living have no right," Gordon thinks. But here, in this brilliant novel, in the rare, bright bits of hope, like glimmers of shiny coins on a dirty street, Morris shows us the possibility.

Reviewed by Caroline Leavitt

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.