I perhaps shouldn't discuss this since I've not yet finished it (this go-around anyway; I read it when I first bought an advance copy for $1 at the Miami Book Fair International in November 2003), but since each story is the length and density of a novella, it seems as if in finishing the first story, "The Hill Station," that I have completed something already. I am now in the midst of "All the Rivers in the World," which is set oddly in Florida and Maine, the former, my home, and the latter where I spent a bit of time last July, and where my son will be leaving for a month on Sunday. Part of the story is set also in Rwanda (no personal connection there).
If Ethan Canin and Jhumpa Lahiri co-wrote a story, it would sound just like "The Hill Station." The medical knowledge and precision of Canin are here, as is Lahiri's skill at rendering the sights and smells of India through the eyes of a successful American born-daughter of Indian parents, who is reconciling her Indian roots with an American sensibility. It's medical without being clinical, and emotionally restrained without being cold.
"All the Rivers in the World" finds medicine of diminished importance in the narrative, but the same precision and clarity of information remain, although this time concerning lobster fishing, hardware, and Florida currents; in short, Murray knows a lot about a lot. In this story, too, the central character is emotionally detached, but not so much so that he does not command some empathy from the reader. More soon to come.
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