The Two Hotel Francforts by David Leavitt

Two-time PEN Faulkner finalist David Leavitt's eighth novel The Two Hotel Francforts [Kindle], out yesterday, yet again maps new territory, after his IMPAC Dublin-shortlisted The Indian Clerk [Kindle](Cambridge, Madras from 1913 to 1936), The Body of Jonah Boyd (California, 1969 and later), Martin Bauman [Kindle](literary Manhattan in the 80s), The Page Turner [Kindle](Rome, NYC), While England Sleeps (London during WWI), Equal Affections(New Jersey), and The Lost Language of Cranes (New York). Here, he follows two married American couples stuck in Lisbon for a momentous fortnight in 1940 waiting for a ship to take them safely back to the States: Longtime working expats in Paris, Pete and Julia Williams, and permanent idle wanderers, Iris and Edward Freleng, who together write a series of mystery novels. Soon, the two husbands embark on a rocky affair. The nude romps on the beach at night, the burning sex on a car hood during the day, the wanting and worry, the strange behavior and unexplained absences, all these are brand new to one of them and old hat to the other. Deepening the plot, one wife knows, colluding and controlling, while the other wife harbors a huge hidden life of her own, beyond her Jewish identity, which she is also masking.

Because Leavitt establishes so many strong dualities -- two couples, two hotels, occupied / free zones, secrets and exposure, and the constant suspicion of spies -- readers might anticipate the story to toggle between two points of view. Instead, he has plain Pete Williams recount all the events from many years later, somewhat in the manner of Henry James' careful, befuddled innocents who get far more education than they expect in Europe. With its semi-rich Americans abroad, troubled family ties, and beauty struggling to suppress a kind of a madness, the mood may also call to mind Tender Is the Night. As Leavitt moves his layered story along, ably conjuring the war's hard energy and the nervous plenty of a neutral Portugal, his real subject is narration. Believe it. This book's big reveal and ultimate action come not through Pete but in excerpts from the Frelengs' subsequent mystery novel and a fluttery memoir by another character. Pete opens the next chapter with, "I am not, I gather, a very good storyteller," and proceeds to list all ten "Rules the Novice Writer Should Follow," saying it was only the discovery that he had broken every dictum that compelled him to finish his manuscript. The result further expands Leavitt's already impressive body of work.