The pall of dread hangs over Lying Low—not terror, but something slower, vaguer, the nightmares of a summer afternoon before the thunder when the air is thick, and horror, yet unnameable, hints but does not reveal itself. The success of this novel rests almost entirely on its tone. Johnson speaks in the voice of the observer of the American condition whose data suggests that our only possible fate is to have our throats cut in our beds by unlikely strangers….
Johnson is highly successful in depicting the inner life of this discriminating moralist [Theo] who is proud of her body's good condition as if her body were an animal she had reared, and romantic about Marybeth, the beautiful terrorist whom she vows to shelter even without knowing the specific nature of her crimes.
It may be the central flaw of this novel that even the reader does not know the specific nature of Marybeth's crimes. She floats through the novel, alternately longing for the peace of certain capture and trying to elude it by obtaining a false identity…. Johnson's description of the childless Marybeth's desperate attempt to keep [a] child entertained for a day … is a wonderfully observed and finely sustained episode. Marybeth's terror when she thinks the child is lost, her relief at finding him, her inept comprehension of his omnipresent physical needs are described with a finely paced precision that, alas, Johnson does not often achieve in Lying Low.
This is a free excerpt of 240 words. There are 581 words (approx.
2 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Johnson, Diane 1934–: Critical Essay by Mary Gordon Access Pass.
