Sam Savage published his first novel, Firmin--an odd, comic gem about a rat who likes to read--at 65. Eight years later, he has published his fourth novel (with the same publisher): It Will End with Us.
It's a curious mix of Proust and Beckett, set in Hope Springs, S.C., in the 1940s and '50s, when the old South is coming to an end. In the voice of Eve Annette Trezevant Taggart, the story appears on the page in widely spaced one- or two-sentence paragraphs, closer to a prose poem than a novel. Many of the paragraphs begin with "I remember," as Eve looks back at herself, her brothers, her father and, most of all, her mother, who loved to read and write, who hoped to be a writer. At her mother's desk, Eve tells us, "I feel that I am sitting in for her... I am my mother."
"I remember" takes on an almost meditative invocation, as Eve delves deeply into her past like Proust's great narrator who constantly searches for lost time. This privileged young woman, with her servants and her big house, tells us the "world seems such a poor and barren place" and "very little of importance happens now." And so, as with Beckett's speaker in The Unnamable, Eve's monologue goes on and on. Savage assembles each fragmented memory, like pieces in a puzzle, into a strange and powerful portrait of a woman obsessed with family, the old South and the act of remembering itself. --Tom Lavoie, former publisher