Morgantown: Difficulty at the Beginning Book 2

by Keith Maillard

A Globe and Mail Top 100 Pick of 2006 John Dupre, a junior at West Virginia University, is an English major on the Dean's List dressed up as a Beatnik cowboy, the folk-singing resident outsider before nonconformity became a youth uniform. Morgantown is a masterful ensemble piece centering around John and peopled by his unforgettable friends in the out Bill Cohen, the sharpshooting, knife-throwing Zen Buddhist Harvard scholar; Marge Levine, the political radical with the Nefertiti eyes; and William Revington, the scion of old money who has the world on a platter and can't think of a single thing to do with it. And then theres his girl-friends and sexual Carol Rabinowitz, the Wyatt scholar and Jewish American Princess; Natalie, the folk-singing boy-girl with the mind of a scientist; Cassandra Markapolous, whom John loves but is not allowed to be in love with. And, there's the Alice in the photograph, the boy dressed up as a girl dressed up as another girl, on and on endlessly a hall of mirrors that threatens to draw John into its vortex.

Genres: Fiction, Modern

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Rico · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second of Maillard's "Difficulty At The Beginning" quartet follows John Dupre to West Virginia University circa 1962. There, he struggles to make sense of women -- and his own sexuality -- on the eve of the sexual revolution.

This installment is as beautifully written and painstakingly detailed as the first book in the series, though "Morgantown" seems even less concerned with plot and more concerned with its characters. Each of Dupre's many female loves are given such richly detailed, contradictory personalities it's hard to believe they're truly fictional; their quirks -- and there are many, many quirks -- feel exactly true and right.

That said, I did feel the final 50 or so pages of the book, though vividly written and totally readable, promise more than they deliver, and feel strangely disordered, as if Maillard was rushing to squeeze in a last few epiphanies and confrontations before his book got overlong. But it's a rare misstep -- and I'm still diving into book 3 ASAP.