Autumn is a shy novel, its brevity a sign that it does not wish to call itself too insistently to our attention. Its shortness is also an indication of Miss Mojtabai's style—the use of suggestion to create overtones, things "divined by the ear but not heard by it": Willa Cather's novel démeublé. Of all styles open to the writer, it is the riskiest to use. To heighten our sense of the inexplicable but abiding mystery and charm of the real by suggestion alone remains the most arduous style to achieve. I cannot say that Miss Mojtabai has been altogether successful, but I am willing to applaud the risks she has taken and to commend her work.

One of her most tantalizing risks is the use of a taciturn first-person narrator. Will, now retired, tells his own story, and what he has to say must be, in...