Going back to the ranch

Press, 30 August 1986, Page 22

Going back to the ranch

Say Goodbye to Sam. By Michael J. Arlen. Andre Deutsch, 1985. 231 pp. $24.95. (Reviewed by Margaret Quigley) This is the first novel by an author who has already made a name for himself in other branches of writing. His books include “Exiles,” “Passage to Ararat,” and several collections of essays on television. Moving from winning awards in this field Michael Arlen shows an early and impressive control of this different genre. Tom Avery, a journalist working in New York, decides on a whim, in the spring of the year he turns 40, that he and his new young wife should spend the summer with his father, a famous and irascible Hollywood director. “If she was lonely I would give her that final part of me, the only part I had left to give: the ranch at Santa Ana; the focus of our family life I guess you’d call it, in the years when my mother and father were still married, and when we had (in a manner of speaking) a family life. My

father’s ranch. Where my father still lived. I thought I’d give Catherine it and him, at least for a few weeks in the sumner. I thought I’d be strong enough to make him like me.” The landscape of New Mexico is brilliantly evoked in a few sparse phrases and makes a harsh, sunbeaten and mountainous backdrop to the strange relationships which develop among the three main characters. These three, and the few minor characters who skirt around the edges of the novel, are all vivid creations. Sam, the father and centre of the book, is powerfully drawn with a few words of description, some brief barked dialogue, and most importantly by the others’ reactions to him. The story is slight in length and in action, but it creates a powerful impression of a place and a person, both compelling and dangerous. The low key ending is perfectly written, suggesting some answers to questions about three people with whom the reader has become very Involved.