John Wray’s first novel, The Right Hand of Sleep, comes to mind—partly because I recently finished it (July 2002), but perhaps even more so because it paints a remarkably wise, patient and compassionate portrait of Austrian life between the wars. I am not only grateful for his history and geography lessons, but also indebted to his sentences, many of which I admire for their grace alone. The sounds and rhythms impress me as carefully crafted pleasures. So, too, do the turns of phrase that capture persistent emotions of the novel. Most memorable, in part because I have described it to friends, is the protagonist Oscar’s reply to his girlfriend when she relays her Austrian cousin’s complicity in ruining an Austrian Jew’s business. Without apparent disapproval, she reports that while the German SS destroyed the man’s shop, the cousin was there but did nothing. Therefore, she says, he bore no responsibility. Oscar replies in a tone that characterizes much of his disheartened, resilient repugnance. He says that she will have to explain her statement to him sometime when they are both feeling quite patient. As my friend, Doug, pointed out, it is the second half of Oscar’s remark that distinguishes it from other iterations of this wounded, angry incomprehension. John’s beautifully powerful language recognizes the role of time’s cumulative effect. He finds several ways of capturing initially vague images that resolve themselves as writer and reader approach them.
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