so this is maybe #6 or 7 from macdonald for me...paperback i have, fifth printing, march 1964 says the copyright is 1951. description says 1948. an early macdonald, regardless, hey?story begins:when the woman left his side he turned, in his sleep, toward the window.the late october sun slanted across west canada lake, rebounded from the locked shutters of the other camps, shone with faint warmth through the open window of teed morrow's rented camp, shone red through his closed eyelids as he let himself drift slowly up from a nap of pure exhaustion.okee-dokee then, onward and upward, as the good doctor said. update, notes to myself after reading chapter one, 14 dec 14macdonald tells a good story...and though this is at most #7...i think i've read in at least 3 of 7 that is you take a hair...there on the brush in this case, and pull it through your fingers...kinda like one does with christmas ribbon?...it should curl back on itself...this is how you tell you're healthy. heh!and...the word simian applied to a woman's face...i know it was used in my last macdonald, One More Sunday and it is used here...to describe the woman-portion of an affair. nice, too, how in this story, we see the end-of-the-affair (isn't that a graham greene title)...or we see what could be the end...and in the other read, of more than one affair, we don't read the end until close to story's close.teed morrow turns 31 and a friend of his from the war (ww2)enlists his help in cleaning up a town, much as they did in germany after the war. that's another repeated image in macdonald's stories...politics...town politics. should be interesting to see how it plays out in this story.update at page 72, chapter seven, 14 dec 14want to record it because it seems important to me...there has been another repeated image/scene...teed...dreaming...running up a stairwell...repeated, or actually, this could be the original as the repeated image is in that other one, One More Sunday, though i forget who to attribute the dream in that one...and in that one, seemed like the dream image continued past the top of the steps...until the dreamer was out in space, like willey e coyote, legs pumping. anyway...good story so far. the characters are solid. there's a sense of place, always...you know where they stand on the set. there is very little in the way of...minor characters, peripheral characters...the set is alive and well, as are the characters...and at times...in the lake at the camp, swimming...inside...planning...at other times, i would like to get a sense of activity elsewhere...so that the set is not a stage-set...though it would be unfair to describe these sets thus. but that is one thing lacking...i think...peripheral characters, scene/setting characters...they're all around us, all the time, but not here in the story though the story is still good. i'd hazard that if i did index this one like i have in the past...that list of 'minor' characters would be slim...couple boys, who teed played catch with...who knew the man who dropped the car was not teed...that one scene was more alive because of those three minor peripheral characters. so...strange, hey? that the story can still be good?reminds me of the last story i read...or, one of the last ones...The Silent Wife...i think there were some peripheral characters there...thinking...thinking...but there was that back/forth him/her...almost like first person eye-narration though it was third. ummm. update, finished, monday monday, 15 dec 14good story...the battle for control of a city/town...the bag guys running the "good" guys and a few "good" guys do battle...both sides lose something or all. wondered if the "bad" guys...at times...i'm thinking toward the end...raval...if he wasn't a tad 'toonish. you'll never get me, coppers!...that sort of thing...guy talking out of the side of his mouth. heh! i'm not sure that jake's plan went over as well with me...thinkin...ummm, how'd that work? real? really? but you go with the flow, it is a story...and one can allow for it...but not without saying something about it didn't ring true. come to think of it...jake seemed a tad off throughout...a fantasy. anyway...still a good read. onward upward.
