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Title: The Mark of a John Gardner Protege
Review: Robert Mooney studied with John Gardner at SUNY/Binghamton. I had the very good fortune to know a circle of writers/artists who studied with him when he taught at SIU/Carbondale. This book, like their works, has qualities I believe are the mark of the student/protege Gardner especially fostered--great crafting of sentences, a mix of very beautiful and the raw, very real people, an allegiance to his ideal of moral fiction but never in any way righteous, just true. As the extremes in response among the reviews show, it's not a work for the Saturday afternoon speed reader, but then I wouldn't expect that from someone who studied with Gardner, who in addition to the better known of his writings, was so astute in medieval and renaissance works he is renowned for having written Cliff notes for Chaucer!
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