Foxhunt
In Paris for the first time in 1949, Canadian Milne Lowell is pleased to meet old friends and make new acquaintances at the International Day of Resistance to Dictatorship and War. The purpose of the meeting is to begin forming the editorial staff of a literary magazine that will be based in London and foster cultural freedom, optimism, and discovery. Yet the 1950s in Europe are dark with what one character calls post-war stench and overwhelming feelings of ideological uncertainty. The mission of the publication called Witness is to reinvigorate the intellectual mind in Europe, but its groundings are also political and anti-communist.
Foxhunt is an ambitious debut. Passages are elegantly written, and observations of literary life are keen. However, pacing is slow and cumbersome. Dialogue often falls into run-of-the-mill everyday conversation rather than fodder for plot development. Settings are atmospheric and vaguely threatening—a blue car that sits idling on a hill then quickly disappears, a man lingering in a doorway. It is unclear, however, whether the threats are real or perceptions arising from underlying paranoia.
Foxhunt nonetheless lingers. Its depictions of a politically unsettled and suspicious time are all too relevant in today’s divided and fractious world.
