Summary:

The novel, set in the 1950s in the prep school town of Gravesend, is an extraordinary account of friendship, coming of age, families, "normalcy," politics, faith, and doubt. The title character is an unusually small child--as an adult barely five feet tall--with a strange and striking voice that makes many people uneasy.

The only son of a New Hampshire granite quarrier and his odd and reclusive wife, Owen is best friends with Johnny Wheelwright, the narrator of the book and grandson of one of the town's most distinguished families. The friendship is sealed by a freak accident when Owen hits a baseball that kills Johnny's mother, Tabitha, who is just arriving at the game.

The remainder of the novel is a back-and-forth between past and present as Johnny searches for his identity--his mother is unmarried and never reveals the father's name--and Owen searches for his destiny--he believes that he is an instrument of God. Both searches have amazing resolutions.

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After a stressful trip to cold-war Russia in 1964, Saturday Review editor Norman Cousins tells how he developed a debilitating illness which confines him to bed. He is admitted to hospital for tests and treatments, and is diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, but his condition deteriorates and he is given a gloomy prognosis. He notices that the depressing routine of hospital life tends to produce side effects that aggravate his condition.

With the blessing of one of his doctors, he checks out of hospital and into a comfortable (yet less expensive) hotel where the food is better and he can watch funny movies while he medicates himself with high doses of Vitamin C. He is convinced that the slow improvement in his condition is owing to his individualized methods of therapy and his having taken charge of his own situation.

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The setting for "The Shadow Box" is three cottages on the grounds of a large hospital. Here, three tales unfold, at first serially, and then towards the end of each of the play’s two acts, simultaneously. Each tale features a person who is dying. Each person is surrounded by loved ones. All are trying to face and make sense of death.

The first family we meet is the most conventional. Joe, a working class husband and father, is joined at the cottage by his wife Maggie, who, in denial of Joe’s impending death is afraid to enter the cottage. Their son, Stephen, age 14, has not yet been told of his father’s terminal condition. The second family consists of Brian, who is brutally forthright about his demise; Mark, his doting lover; and Beverly, Brian’s wild ex-wife who comes to visit them. The third family is a feisty, blind, and wheelchair-bound mother, Felicity, and her dutiful daughter, Agnes. An off-stage character, "the interviewer," pops in and out of the scenes, offering insight into the various characters through questioning.

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Death beds have been around for a long time. Ancient Greeks, Japanese monks, Medieval Christians, and tubercular Victorians all had opportunities to use them. Some folks were witty, some were slow, and some called for a priest when the time came. "And you and I, too, may lie on ours, / the vigilant family in a semicircle, / or the night nurse holding our hand / in the dark, or alone." We cannot avoid the death bed, but what we can hope for is "just at the end / a moment of pure awareness . . . . " [56 lines]

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The story is set in the mid-1950s in Italy, where the old order has passed away and the postwar economic miracle is beginning to blossom. Our heroine, Chiara, is the beautiful 17-year-old daughter of Count Giancarlo Ridolfi, the scion of a distinguished (but now impoverished) Florentine family. Indeed, Chiari's family history includes the romantic tale of a 16th century female dwarf.

The (more or less) hero of our story is Salvatore Rossi, an earnest young neurologist who hails from a Communist family in a poor village in the south. One night Chiara and Salvatore meet by chance at a concert and fall hopelessly in love. Neither one knows how to respond to the powerful emotions that possess them.

Chiara consults Barney, her worldly and loudmouthed English friend from boarding school. What should she do? Salvatore consults Gentilini, his older and overwhelmingly married colleague. How should he proceed? Meanwhile, Cesare, Chiara's avuncular and solitary cousin who lives on the family farm, has his own part to play in the story. And, in truth, the story lurches from one misunderstanding to another as the wedding approaches, eventuates, and recedes into the past.

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Terrified of dying from AIDS but even more afraid of living with it, the title character of this romantic comedy--a gay actor/waiter-- makes the ultimate safe choice: to give up sex entirely. Determined to find both a substitute for sex and the meaning of life in the cruel meaninglessness of an epidemic, Jeffrey embarks on a journey through a picaresque and postmodern landscape. What he discovers is that while his desperate renunication of human connection may remove him from the physical experience of death, it will not protect him from the emotional experience of loss.

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The poems in this collection are elegant, economical, worldly, and humorous. The tone is generally one of amused ruefulness. In "Alcohol" the poet addresses his subject as "the eighth / and shallowest / of the seven seas." He salutes the "nice" people, "on whom depends / the diminishing goodness of the world."

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The poem's title refers to John Hunter Hospital, where Les Murray lay near death for three weeks as a result of a liver condition. He "turned yellow as the moon / and slid inside a CAT-scan wheel," then found himself emerging from a "time warp" of unconsciousness 20 days later. Murray reports that he is "the only poet whose liver / damage hadn't been self-inflicted."

He goes on to explain what had happened to make his liver rehearse "the private office of the grave." When he was over the crisis, he signed a "Dutch contract," presumably an advance directive of some sort. Surprisingly, surviving his bout of acute liver failure seemed to cure his other problem, "the Black Dog, depression." The poem ends with a paean of gratitude for "the project of seeing conscious life / rescued from death." [80 lines]

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This story takes place late at night in the quiet wards of a hospital. Some of the staff are kidding around about Night Sister Bean, who is supposedly a witch, but is now off-duty because she had an operation. Hilda from Housekeeping is pregnant again.

Since Hilda is unmarried, some of her co-workers come up with the idea of giving her a proper wedding. The Casualty Porter volunteers to be the groom. They just manage to complete the fanciful night wedding when Hilda goes into labor. Her baby is born in an elevator on the way to the maternity ward.

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The story opens on the day that Ridgeon, a prominent research doctor, is knighted. His friends gather to congratulate him. The friends include Sir Patrick, a distinguished old physician; Walpole, an aggressive surgeon; Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonington, a charismatic society doctor; and Blenkinsop, a threadbare but honest government doctor. Each one has his favorite theory of illness and method of cure. These are incompatible--one man's cure is another man's poison. Nonetheless, they all get along.

A young woman (Mrs. Dubechat) desperately seeks help for her husband from Ridgeon, who has evidently found a way to cure consumption by "stimulating the phagocytes." Ridgeon initially refuses, but changes his mind for two reasons--Dubechat is a fine artist and Ridgeon is smitten with his wife.

When the doctors meet Dubechat, however, they find that he is a dishonest scoundrel. Ridgeon eventually decides to treat Blenkinsop (who also has consumption) and refer the artist to Bloomfield Bonington, this insuring that he will die. In the end Ridgeon justifies his behavior as a plan to let Dubechat die before his wife find out what an amoral cad he actually was. This, in fact, happens and Dubechat's artistic reputation soars.

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