A reader might think he’s got himself into a picaresque and then Wham-O (like the slingshot young Evan Blaine probably lusted after when he read the ads in Popular Science), some brace of characters lurches onto the stage and we’ve “got ourselves a situation.” Against backdrops that Glen Larum clearly knows down to their aromatic essence, Waltz Against the Sky takes us into that setting where someone is knitting a sleeve of the sweater in the bedroom, someone else is working on the collar in the kitchen, there’s a sleeve half done in the garage and who knows what’s going on out on the patio? It’s a luscious array of variegated characters who are presented not in a condescending paragraph but rather in little bits, inched out onto the work table then carefully moved aside as we ponder another part of the knitting endeavor. Hint: It does end up as a sweater, but you gotta be there. Read it. It’s not a galloper that will keep you up half the night. It’s more something to be savored, reflected upon, and then picked up again. We await Mr. Larum’s next work.
