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The Body of Jonah Boyd, David Leavitt
Bloomsbury
Reviewed by James O'Sullivan (Courtesy of Taranaki Daily News)

The Wrights are an American family in a typical American college town at the tail end of the sixties.

Ernest Wright is a college professor and Nancy is his stay-at-home wife. She pegs her identity to her home. They have the obligatory three children. Mark flees to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War draft. Ben is a moody teenager and terrible poet with aspirations of literary success. Daphne is the sassy teenage daughter with limited respect for her parents.

The story is told from the point of view of Denny, Ernest's secretary and part-time lover. She is a lonely young woman and enjoys the Wrights' domestic realm.

There is a Wuthering Heights-type narrative here as we see a family through the eyes of a close servant, but in this case Denny is more embedded in the action.

One Thanksgiving, Anne, Nancy's old friend, comes to visit with her new husband, Jonah Boyd, the established author. Nancy is disappointed that Anne is drinking heavily and not happy with her new husband, and Jonah loses his notebooks containing almost an entire novel. This event changes the lives of many people in this drama.

The Body of Jonah Boyd is neatly written and Leavitt manages to avoid the usual clichés without adding gratuitous plot twists just to trip us up. However, I couldn't help but feel a little unfulfilled by this novel. At 211 pages it's a little short. The narrative covers the fateful Thanksgiving weekend in 1969 and then breezes through time to the present, tying up all sorts of loose ends on the way. It's like listening to the highlights of a Broadway musical on CD when, really, we want the whole thing. Despite this, Leavitt is an engaging writer and this novel is better than the average.