BOOK REVIEW
Indian Summer by William Dean Howells
In Indian Summer, American author William Dean Howells explores lost love, middle age, friendship, and ex-patriot life in late 19th Century Italy.Published in 1886, the novel follows 41-year-old Theodore Colville from Des Vaches, Indiana to Florence, Italy. It was in Florence 17 years earlier that Colville fell in love with a young woman who jilted him, leaving him to nurse a broken heart ever since. By a coincidence best glossed over, back in Florence, he meets up with Lina Bowen, the mutual friend of Colville and his former lover. Bowen, widowed and with a young daughter, is living in Florence and watching out for Imogene Graham, a 20-year-old American beauty.
What follows is part an Austen-like comedy of manners, part a Henry James parlor drama. Howells is often compared (rather unfavorably) with his American contemporary. Like James, Howells can talk around a subject without getting to the heart of it. But while James goes on endlessly, with little relief, Howells breaks up the navel gazing with more action and a lot of humor. It took me a while to adapt to the slow rhythm of his writing, but once I did, the book flowed right along. Colville is a quick wit, both clown and charmer, sometimes to his own detriment as he looks for the clever thing to say instead of what should be said.
As can be imagined, the triangle of Colville, Bowen, and Graham is at the center of the story as we watch the unsurprising fallout of Coville’s desire to have his cake and eat it too. The leitmotif running through the story is age and aging. Howells subtly compares the youth and inexperience of Graham with the maturity of Bowen, both played off Colville’s mid-life crises antics. An elderly, retired minister, Mr. Waters, often drifts in to offer a more dispassionate view that comes with the wisdom of age.
Like an Indian summer, Howell’s novel is a warm spot in what can be the grey and chilly literary season of late 19th Century novels. Nothing too grim. Minimum melodrama. And no tragic ending. All in all, a pleasant holiday in Florence.
NOTES
I read this because I am trying to read more of my pretty NYRB editions and the title fit the season. Also, while I can't count it as a book for Victober because Howells is an American author, not technically a Victorian, I think of it as Victober-adjacent.