Maslin Watch: Nary an Orlando Joke to Be Found, Alas

"I had the idea that for some personal reason, which I might never know, she'd wanted me to unlock her riddle," writes Mr. Ball, the Savannah-born author of Slaves in the Family and The Sweet Hell Inside. Thus, he surmised, "I would have to investigate Dawn Simmons and follow her story all the way to the naked truth."

Say what you will about Maslin (because Lord knows I do), but at least she calls bullshit on such self-indulgent melodrama, albeit very politely, as befits a Times book critic, and with a little too much willingness to indulge the author and see where he goes with it. Apparently, in Peninsula of Lies, Ball's trying to do some sort of "Quest for Corvo" on Dawn Langley Simmons, a Savannah matriarch who used to sit at the feet of the Bloomsbury crowd... as a young lad.

The story itself sounds like it might be interesting, without Ball tromping around all over it, but the details and quotes Maslin selectes make his version appear utterly dreadful, like her singling out the book's "most specious descriptive touch." But she ends on a coy half-revelation that might have been more profitably explored, as an opportunity to examine whatever themes the book may have, rather than spend so much time on random details.