REVIEWED BY FRANCINE PROSE
FICTION
Entering middle age and teaching freshman composition, Jack Tennant, the hero of Davies's new novel, thinks it might be time to go home. Rather, his girlfriend does: Tennant only half wants to confront the ghosts that have haunted his family since the drowning death of his brother. But the answers that he gets when he returns are life changing in ways he never imagined. Jack is affable enough and Davies gets off some funny lines, but the book is oddly sketchy; its slightly mannered breeziness makes it hard to know how seriously we are meant to take the guilt and sorrows of its characters.
