Mosquitoes

aulkner's second novel was the only purely comic book he wrote until his very last book, "The Reivers". It has never previously been published in this country - for no better reason than that his output was so constant (twenty-four books in just over thirty years) that, starting two books behind America - and with World War II intervening - Chatto and Windus have only now caught up with this early extravaganza.

"Mosquitoes" has the colour, humour and originality of Faulkner's maturer writing, together with a youthful exuberance which will delight the reader. Opening in New Orleans, steamy and rich as compost, the story proceeds to a voyage among the Florida cays. Mrs. Maurier, a culture vulture from the same aviary as the Marx Brothers' statuesque and preposterous "Mrs. Rittenrotten", takes an unruly group of acquaintances on her yacht. A laconic poet, a too articulate novelist, a surly sculptor, a very English major, a Jewish cynic, a young man with a straw hat and an accommodating blonde, all help to disrupt Mrs. Maurier's cultural outing. Drink flows, anecdotes run wild (the story of the sheep-farm in the swamp is surely the funniest thing Faulkner ever wrote): the yacht runs aground, a young couple gets lost, a man spends half a day looking for his own body.

"Mosquitoes", though it moves between the brink of tragedy and the edge of farce, is above all a superb example of the comic invention which was an essential part of Faulkner's genius.

Romance / Literatura Estrangeira