Jamie Is My Heart’s Desire by Alfred Chester (Vanguard, 1957)
A strange, alluring, and wonderful book, with the weirdness of Jane Bowles and other mid-century writers who unhinged fiction from the constraints of hyper-reality. Harry, our narrator, works as a clerk in a funeral parlor, and is surrounded by interesting characters both male and female, (perhaps) alive and (perhaps) dead. One of these characters, the titular Jamie, though seen and acknowledged by all the other characters, is invisible to Harry.
The novel seems to be about faith in some obscured way. The scenes are vividly described but somewhat oddly skewed, as is the language used to recount them. The depiction of a somewhat hallucinatingly re-imagined (and re-mapped) New York City on several very hot summer days and nights is quite beautiful and transporting, and the book has an eerie, haunting softness and beauty. On the basis of this, I’m eager to read more Alfred Chester.
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