The Return

by James Terry

Bernard Aoust is a film professor at Berkeley, nearing retirement, who finds himself increasingly at odds with modern life. A Frenchman by birth, and an ideological child of May '68, Aoust is also obsessed with a long lost silent French film from 1923 and its obscure director, devoting his academic life to the film and banking on a new monograph to salvage his flagging career. After a series of unusual occurrences, the lost film plunges Aoust into an existential crisis..

146 pages, Paperback

Published September 5, 2023

Reviews

[Jack Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

The novella is extraordinarily well-written. To be in James Terry’s hands is to be in the hands of a humble master. His considered style is marked by precision and a decided lack of flair. There’s a leanness to his prose almost as if he wrote it once, brimming with sentimentality and Romance, then wrote it again, stripping out all but the bones, the marrow. The result is arresting. We feel how he cares deeply for his hero but wants to make him pay for his shortcomings - like some ancient god - so that we might learn. This is the essence and function of the allegory. Indeed, this is the essence and function of all stories well-told.

[Kevin Fitchett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes when you're feeling good about yourself as a spooky narrative poet, after writing a good obituary for your grandmother and then a few sage stanzas on autumn trout, you come across a new writer whom you had never heard of, whose book was edged across your bow. This is that book. This is that writer who puts things in perspective. I read this book and I start counting on my fingers how many other writers are this wise, this funny, this earnest, this exciting. Living writers: there aren't that many . . . .