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The puzzle in Rose intrigues and satisfies, but Smith goes for more than mystery. As in Gorky Park and Polar Star, he aims for dimension and fullness. His painterly descriptions of the village become a dark-toned mural of industrial England, and his fascination with the way this world works brings it to teeming life. Mine cars drop into claustrophobic pits, noxious gasses whirl like furies though subterranean passages, and stiff, painful clog shoes echo on cobblestones under a sky "the ashen gray of an eclipse."
Blair learns of the "pit girls," women who dress in men's clothes and inflame the union by working for lower wages than those earned by the men. One of these women, Rose, fascinates and attracts Blair. Her life entwines in Blair's investigation and forces him to confront his own, painful past as a child in Wigan. What begins as a search for one man turns into a three-fold mystery.
In Rose and Blair, Smith creates two singular characters. The discovery Blair makes brings not just surprise but a warm, romantic resonance for himself, for Rose, and for the reader.
Gerald Bartell is a freelance writer in New York City.
©1996, ProMotion, inc.
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