pedantic nuthatch

The enigmatic Shroud resists easy summary or critique. It concerns Axel Vander, elderly academic and survivor of World War II, crippled physically and emotionally, who hides a secret. That secret is discovered by Catherine (Cass) Cleave, a girl with her own disabilities. The relationship that springs up between them resolves into a kind of release for them both.

Most of the narrative is told in Vander's first person. His fondness for dark vowels and near-coinages ("trepidant," "unwontedly," "pococurantish") combined with a cast of grotesques for minor characters suggests a poetic tale of Vladimir Nabokov's as remixed by David Lynch—not to mention Vander's insistence on referring to California as Arcady.

I caught her eye and smiled disparagingly. Do you know these smiles, that make the flesh of your face seem to crackle like cellophane from the effort? She watched me, motionless, her knife and fork suspended; her suddenly going still like this brought a small shock to the air between us, as when the refrigerator, that has been throbbing to itself unnoticed, all at once falls silent, with a lurch. (pp. 64-65)

The grotesques are imbued with hidden meanings. There is a dwarfish child found in the night lying in a hotel corridor and singing "not so much a sound as part of the silence." A leering, clownish man with carrot-red hair passes into Vander's sight repeatedly.

Images of concealment are part of the fabric of the novel. Much of the action takes place in Turin, and the titular shroud is that of St. Veronica's. Always on display at another venue, it is never glimpsed by Axel or Cass. Heavy, dark curtains cover the windows of the hotel rooms where they lodge, sometimes revealing a crack of daylight at the parting. The shadowy Vander's name is misread by others as "Varder" or "Vandal."

Broken in body with his gimpy leg and blind eye, dissociated from his feelings (an admission of love is immediately followed by defensice distancing), and ultimately bereft of the cleaving Cass, the harlequin Vander continues on.