Although he is the author of seven full-length novels, four of which have exclusively human protagonists, Richard Adams is perceived primarily but erroneously to be a writer of pastoral anthropomorphic fantasy. This perception derives from the enormous...

[In The Girl in a Swing] Adams banks everything on the clue, that telltale narrative device that came in with the detective story and was perfected by Freud. Adams's job is to keep going a plausible tale about Alan Desland, a young, talented Berkshire ceramics dealer who falls in love with a beautiful German stenographer in Copenhagen, while dropping enough clues so that he can drive his story to the ordained awful moment toward which the clues have been pointing all along…. What Adams does pl...

The Girl in a Swing is a study of guilt made manifest—of the far-reaching effects of the past, clattering in upon a fragile porcelain world. It's narrated by [Alan Desland], in exactly the tone you'd expect from such a man: quiet, reflective, with just the right amount of fussiness. He takes his time. He digresses often upon the subject of ceramics, which is not only his business but his passion. He's given to quoting poetry at what he considers to be appropriate moments. Some of...

Neither the author's reputation nor the title nor the first tranquil pages can possibly prepare the reader for this astonishing book ["The Girl in a Swing"]. Richard Adams is best known as the author of "Watership Down," an animal fable that has attracted a following scarcely less fanatical than the early Tolkien addicts. The title of his new novel evokes childhood pleasures and the charm of a Fragonard. Its early pages on first sight seem to be the relatively commonplace ...