Pitch Dark by Renata Adler (1983)

A woman who knows better examines her affair with a married man.

Book Review: Pitch Dark is an intelligent novel in which we learn much about the narrator and little about the object of her interest. Muriel Spark says it best in her incisive and insightful Afterword: "Renata Adler's novel Pitch Dark, like her first work of fiction Speedboat, is a genre unto itself, a discontinuous first-person narrative." After the two novels Adler wrote no more fiction; her unique, experimental style was a dead end. Although "discontinuous," presented in a jumble of cutting and pasting one or more linear narratives interspersed with set additions and recurring lines, ultimately it's formulaic, going round and round in predictable and comforting circles. Although more plot oriented, Pitch Dark adds little to Speedboat. In both the emotion just below the surface is sublimated to technique and becomes an underlying tension. Adler is wonderfully intelligent and captures the zeitgeist well. But once the reader gets past the experimental artifice there isn't as much there. And the occasional expression of Adler's reactionary beliefs can get tiresome. Although I'm happy to've read one of her novels, I didn't need to read both. Worth it, perhaps, if only to appreciate Spark's brilliant commentary.  [3★]