No doubt that a solid portion of my relishing in this novel is due to it being 1) Annie Dillard, in her last original work, and 2) set in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and 3) I read the bulk of it like a literalist, whilst vacationing in P-town. Enjoying this beside a private pool, in the bay's clean air, was a real treat.

Old Cape Cod, you're beautiful. And the prose here is the same: typical Dillard stuff, gorgeous and lush and tight all at once. Her depictions of the natural world, at length or in passing, remain elegant as ever, and the love between Toby and Lou Maytree, among other loves in the book, is one for the ages. It's not overwrought; it's born of friendship and admiration and beauty in the mundane. It's one for a pristine little art film, really. Who needs that epic new take on Dune when you could have the dunes of the Cape, and all the follies, maladies, tragedies and triumphs had on them, transferred to the silver screen?

The dialogue is spare, and notably arrives sans quote marks throughout, even as the characters' internal monologues are protracted, vivid and forgiving, of self and others. I would like to think, to myself and about myself, the way some of these people think. Pity they're not real, never have been, though for just over 200 pages (my favorite length to any book, esp. a novel), they came to life for me. I kept thinking I saw them around that tiny oceanside hamlet. I kept casting a film version of the book before my eyes as I walked those blocks and popped in and out of crab-tastic eateries, galleries and shops. The only sliver of a downer for me was the last-page conclusion, which had been built up by a reviewer or two. I read it a few times, and maybe I didn't quite get it, but it held a bit less of a payoff than I'd hoped for -- perhaps just as any idyllic vacation plainly has to come to an end.