The Way Things Are

This is a grown-up novel which works on several levels. There is the actual content of the public lectures delivered by Professor Elliot Hawkins. Then there is the mob-like response of lecture's audience. And, of course, there are the relationships of the characters of the novel proper. And each of these strands demonstrates something disturbingly base and fragile in various strata of human life: death, sexual relations, social interaction. What Allen Wheelis has accomplished here is no mean feat - in a sense he has successfully turned Freud's great, dark book "Civilization and its Discontents" into a novel. As in all his work, Wheelis offers no comfort to the reader - he pushes one's nose up against reality. But strangely, this has an enlivening, not a depressing, effect. (I also highly recommend Wheelis's memoir, "The Listener".)