Hopscotch by Brian Garfield

 

Living is something most of us postpone isn’t it? We sell the present for a chance at a future where we may do our living when we’re old and have lost the talent for it.

First things first, this novel it is not a Western, it is a novel of espionage. I have included it here as the author is a fine Western author [many of his titles are reviewed here] and this novel strikes me as a riff on his Western novel Tripwire.

In both, we have a lone protagonist take on a much larger force than himself. He does so with foresight, meticulous planning, and much cleverness along the way.

It strikes me the two could be read in tandem for a comparison, hence the inclusion here.

The novel is also rife with Garfield’s sardonic pragmatism. Small riffs on humanity.

Her laughter was mocking but not unkind. He didn’t respond but he couldn’t share in her contempt for Jayne’s compassion: he couldn’t deceive himself any longer into mocking anyone else’s convictions. He could only envy them.

Or this…

And he’d long since given up the athletic challenges. They’d all got to looking the same way---the way bowling had looked when he’d been a college freshman. As soon as he discovered that the object of bowling was to learn how to do exactly the same thing every time, he’d lost interest.

A beautiful reflection on formula living, hell, even formula reading—if the goal is simply to repeat what has been done, no matter how skillful the repetition, it strikes me, and perhaps the late Mr. Garfield, that there may be more to the world than wearing out the skillful groove.

A fine novel from a fine author—one redolent of his western sensibilities.