Stillness and Shadows

Summary

Gardner’s relentlessly honest and moving portrayal of a broken marriage, and his ambitious unfinished masterpiece - a metafictional mystery centering around one man’s struggle to recover his lost identity - together in one accomplished volume

Stillness: Martin and Joan Orrick - distant cousins who have known each other since early childhood - are in the final throes of a failing marriage. Martin is a compulsive drinker who obsesses about his writing, and Joan is struggling with a debilitating physical condition. Together they search for some type of collective identity, and identify where the dissolution of their love began.

Inspired by therapy sessions Gardner experienced with his first wife, Stillness is an insightful portrait of one couple’s struggle for fulfillment in a tumultuous world.

Private detective Gerald Craine is pursuing an unknown murderer. At the same time, he himself is the target of an unknown person’s pursuit. Stumbling through an alcohol-soaked haze, Craine desperately seeks meaning and understanding in a world fraught with fragmented narratives.

Shadows: John Gardner’s friend Nicholas Delbanco has supplemented this unfinished novel with seven sections from Gardner’s original manuscript that provide critical insight into Gardner’s approach to developing the novel and its characters, giving a rare glimpse inside the creative process of one of the 20th century’s most inventive writers.