Mr. Symons has always given full measure. That is to say, he has never chosen to stand by ingenuity of plot alone; he also gives his attention to character, setting, and tone. In his new novel [The Name of Annabel Lee]—about a stiff British professor of English literature at a New England college who loses his habitual poise and balance in the arms of a transient English girl named Annabel Lee Fetherby—those qualities are present in abundance: in, unfortunately, an overabundance. The story is a good one—why Annabel Lee appeared and why she disappeared. But Mr. Symons has let his abundance run into irrelevancies—about the professor's former fiancée, now married to his father; about an old school friend and his trendy life and adulterous wife; about a dismal place of orgy called the House of Usher—and these, though not uninteresting, become annoying when they are discovered to have nothing to do with the problem of Annabel Lee.
A review of "The Name of Annabel Lee," in The New Yorker, Vol. LX, No. 2, February 27, 1984, p. 136.
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