(3 of 5)
Higgins, author of the minor classic The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1972), still knows how to place surreal descriptions in the dialogue of his characters: "Marian looked like a small horse, perhaps a pony, who had read Vogue and believed it." And he has not lost his conductor's ear for the music and lilt of Boston Irish patois. Here the punch lines are stronger than the plot lines, but Higgins' characters are so shrewdly observed by Year's end, as Edgar confronts Peter, that it is impossible to disagree with his summary: "You're a son of a bitch yourself, but now you've stopped pretending that you aren't. That is our accomplishment." And the author's.
BLOOD OF SPAIN by Ronald Fraser Pantheon; 628 pages; $15.95
Forty years afterward, the conflict that foreshadowed World War II still reverberates in this remarkable oral history. Traversing a scarred land that has endured everything and forgotten nothing, British Historian Ronald Fraser records the memories of survivors. He digs for the truth about Communist betrayals and fascist atrocities, executioners and victims. Many of the recollections are as sanguinary as the war: bombs strike a hospital, airplanes strafe civilians, firing squads are everywhere. Hitler and Stalin control the moves offstage, ever willing to sacrifice Spaniards to German and Soviet causes. Contradiction is the order of the day: "How do you explain that?" inquires a woman. "¡Dios mio! The people who destroy holy images kiss them." On the left, a father and son have their own civil war and lead separate socialist organizations. Yet throughout, the reader is struck by the dignity and character of ordinary people who endured and prevailed. Theirs is the Blood of Spain, and their total recall is more valuable than any number of academic speculations. The death of Generalissimo Franco has loosened tongues. Doubtless, many new volumes on the Civil War will follow this one. They will have trou ble equaling its power and detail. None will surpass it.
SUNDAY PUNCH by Edwin Newman Houghton Mifflin; 279 pages; $9.95
Edwin Newman's comic novel about a skinny English prizefighter who spouts economic theory when struck is what used to be called folderol. As folderol goes, it is on the airy side, and even for airy folderol, it lacks substance. A prospective reader should be warned that the author, perhaps driven to dementia by his efforts to persuade Americans to speak English (in Strictly Speaking and A Civil Tongue), retails a joke about an Oriental fighter named Kid Pro Kuo, "who gave as good as he got." And that one of the characters, a fight manager named Fogbound Franklin, speaks of an important victory as a "mild-stone" and ponders asking for a "decease and desist order" when a gangster tries to move in.