Traces of John Fowles and Vladimir Nabokov appear in John Wain's The Pardoner's Tale…. The book begins as an action-filled narrative centering on a missing person, a presumed kidnapping, and a sexual encounter having the flavor of adolescent fantasy…. The balance of the book shuttles between the "real" and the "invented" stories, following two complicated liaisons…. In the sequel both male protagonists get exactly what they want, establishing The Pardoner's Tale as that rare production, a novel with two happy endings.
Twice in its course the author envisages higher achievement—seems indeed on the verge of transforming his tale from a conventionally competent novelistic performance into something rich and strange. The first intimation of ambition occurs at the abrupt shift from Gus to Giles, wherein the reader discovers that the mystery atmosphere, queer and creaky, of the opening chapter is actually a unique contrivance by John Wain—mimicry of the sound of a novel haltingly composed by a writer leaning on the habit of work to sustain his sanity in a bad hour. The possibility glimpsed at this moment is of a novel that will stand as a work of technical revelation, an intricately playful probe of novelese.
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