A review of David Lodge's Therapy by Scott Stossel. What starts out as an intellectual friendship between the recently widowed Helen and the long-married Messenger soon heats up. She is shocked by Messenger's skeptical interpretation of moral behavior. The uneasy sexual equilibrium is shattered when Helen makes a series of discoveries that disturb her complacent views. But events take a turn she had not anticipated, and she must readjust her ideas about love, marriage, and self-interest all over again.
Lodge is one of the most readable writers now at work.
But by the time he published Straight Man, in 1997, Russo was clearly interested in breaking new ground, and that foray into academic farce showed off his comic timing and sneaky construction to superb effect. Now comes Empire Falls, the author's most ambitious work to date. Yet the focus of this post-industrial panorama is Miles Roby, the manager of the Empire Grill, who seems to preside serenely over the collapse of his personal and professional lives. His wife has left him for the local fitness-club mogul, and his restaurant, leased unto eternity from the rapacious Francine Whiting, is on its last legs. Miles, however, is a pathologically nice guy.