It turns out that Hawaii is the embodiment of extreme loss. Not only has Christabel lost her son here, but, as Rudy explains at length, Hawaii has lost its past to American imperialism, which is alive and well in Iraq. It feels as if Hoban feels so passionately about recent global political events that he cannot help writing about them directly — to the detriment of his subtle art. Reality, which in his delicious novel Fremder is said to be ‘for squilches’, has intruded. The narrator of Amaryllis Night and Day remarks, ‘If reality had a stage door I’d hang around there and see what came out after the show.’ In Come Dance with Me, it’s as if Hoban is so appalled by the events on reality’s stage that he has stomped off to his desk in disgust, without the usual loitering at the stage door.

Nevertheless, a grey February day can only be brightened by a new outing in Hoban-land. Here are the bats and the owls and the references to the work of Redon and so forth. Here is the humour, the fertile language and the inimitable kookiness by which all of Hoban’s work is distinguished. Walk-on parts from previous characters, including Peter Diggs and Amaryllis (‘Trust me, I’m a weirdo’), are like great bunches of flowers presented to faithful readers. Those who gather for the three-day ‘Some-Poasyum’ this month to mark Russell Hoban’s 80th birthday and celebrate his work do not need the new novel to be a masterpiece to justify their enthusiasm.

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