Two Novels by Herman Wouk

 

The Caine Mutiny and Marjorie Morningstar are sufficiently well-known works of fiction that I won’t summarize them here. These novels are great reading. The former is one of the best fiction books I’ve read in ages; I literally couldn’t put it down.  This reading of Marjorie Morningstar was my second. I kept skimming the remembered chapters to leapfrog ahead to the ending which I couldn’t remember.  I wasn’t disappointed. 

I think Herman Wouk has a particular gift for writing about women. This is especially so in Marjorie Morningstar but even in The Caine Mutiny and that other curious novel of his, A Hole in Texas, Wouk seems to attribute a certain unattainability to his female protagonists, an inscrutability that the men in their lives can never fully apprehend.