The Blogg

It is surprisingly enjoyable to read a novel about places you have been (Reading, Harrisburg, Allentown, Philadelphia), events you have attended (the annual Lehigh-Lafayette football game), and in general the culture in which you have lived. Appointment in Samarra is a bit like The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter in that the characters and relationships matter much more than the plot, even though three major events within 48 hours propel the book. If this were solely a book about Julian’s self destruction, there would be no need for chapters told from the perspective of Al Grecco, Lute Fliegler, and so forth. Yet these are important to the narrative, for the insights they give us into the variety of lives lived in Gibbsville and the collective societal climate. O’Hara seems to have a gift for the way people think and talk about each other in private. This was not one of the best novels that I have read recently, but it was one of the most enjoyable. I must admit that I care for the Maugham quote from which the novel takes its name more than the book itself.