Maslin Watch: Things That Make You Go Hmm

To Ms. Patchett, "Lucy had white Irish skin and dark blond hair and in the end that's what you saw, the things that didn't change: her eyes, the sweetness of her little ears." As that may indicate, Ms. Patchett's love for her friend transcended the usual bounds of girlfriendly affection. It was fondly physical: they could curl up happily together.

What exactly is Maslin trying to suggest about Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy? (And don't think such coyness on her part hasn't come to our attention before now...)

In her story of a tender and undying friendship between budding writers, Ann Patchett often invokes the fable of the grasshopper and the ant. She presents herself as the dutiful, hard-working figure and draws another writer, Lucy Grealy, as the more glamorous and flamboyant one. The only thing wrong with this formulation is that Ms. Patchett's latest novel, the gorgeous "Bel Canto," had nothing antlike about it. It was the dazzling performance of a butterfly.

Well, here's the thing: in order to achieve that dazzling effect, you usually have to put in a lot of careful, meticulous work, day after day.

Ultimately, even though she thinks Truth and Beauty is "more repetitive and less concise" than Patchett's original New York article, Maslin recommends the memoir as a "two-character drama at the center of a larger story about how writers build confidence, get their bearings and find their voices."

Meanwhile, I fully admit to being late in my consideration of Monday's mystery review, this time devoted to Lee Child's The Enemy, the sort of " hard-boiled, swaggering thrillers" Maslin usually loves. After poking a bit of fun at one of his ads, she admits "he's got the goods." Then, as she often does, she puts this latest novel featuring a recurring character in solid context, preparing readers for how it "it serves its purpose: to explain Reacher's military training and to show why it has made him such a smart strategist and cool customer." Along, of course, with much quoting of his pithy dialogue. ("'You,' I said. 'Outside.'") And some bits that, if I didn't know different, I'd think were parodying the military thriller's conventions:

"Her skin had a copper tone mixed behind pure ebony black. Her eyes were like coal. Her jaw was delicate, like fine china. She looked impossibly small and gentle, for a soldier. But then I remembered her sharpshooter badges. More than I had."

Then she hits this insight into the appeal of Reacher, and of the thriller genre in a broader sense:

"[H]e emerges as a classic noir loner, and a very charismatic one, despite his willingness and ability to inflict damage on those who he thinks deserve it. It is worth underscoring that these books, while crackling with assertiveness, do not present Reacher as a loose cannon. They avoid the ugliness of an action hero with too free a hand."

An interesting bit of restraint, considering her earlier invocation of Dirty Harry to explain Reacher's appeal, and one could argue just as easily that the "willingness and ability to inflict damage" is integral to such characters' charisma, not a counterforce to it. But she's right, ultimately: another factor in their appeal is often the degree to which their violent tendencies are kept under wraps until just the right moment.