FREDDY'S BOOK
by John Gardner
Knopf; 246 pages; $10
No novel was ever harmed by an irresistible beginning. Freddy's Book, Author John Gardner's eighth novel, is a case in point. While riding the lecture circuit in the Midwest, Professor Jack Winesap meets a strange old historian with a stranger pronouncement: "I have a son who's a monster." Winesap accepts an invitation to the man's house, arrives at an isolated and crumbling old estate during a blizzard, and is promptly snowed in for the night. After some suspenseful dawdling, the host allows his guest to...
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