Now Playing at Canterbury

I'm prejudiced, because this is a novel about my hometown (Iowa City, Iowa) featuring characters based on people I knew. It's an homage to the city and the university. It's entirely believable, and anyone who has lived in a university town will recognize the "types." It's also remarkably well-written, employing a number of experimental devices, most of which work very well. The author is very left-wing and expects us to sympathize with his ultra-liberal hippie-type characters. I'm very right-wing, so I dislike several of the characters he obviously wants me to admire, and disapprove of some of the values put forth in this book. But it's so stylish and evocative and beautifully executed that I'm willing to put politics aside and enjoy the story. This is a "don't miss." Especially if you came of age in the late 60s and early 70s.

This is one of those books I try and make everyone I know read. Few do, because it's longish, and it's not genre fiction. It's much easier to talk people into reading a 200-page murder mystery that a contemporary story about the rehearsal of an opera.The rehearsal of an opera?!?Well, yes. What we get here is, the lives of all the people in the plot - how they came to be at this university, working on or in the cast or staff of a modern opera. The life's travels of the people are the Canterbury part, of course. We also get the opera itself, in bits and pieces. Since some of the stories of the individuals are told in unusual formats - cartoon balloons, for instance - I only wish we could get a bit of the sheet music for the opera also.The characters are all complex and deep, every one an individual. Each one's story is fascinating; the threads they weave together, culminating in the successful performance, are an irresistable fabric.