If one quality holds these books together, it’s deWitt’s compulsively readable sentences, oscillating between the prosaic and the lyrical, the modern and the arcane.
In his third novel, deWitt, a Canadian who now lives in Portland, has pushed his storytelling in yet another new direction, from the contemporary realism of his debut, “Ablutions,” to the Booker Prize-short-listed Western “The Sisters Brothers” and now to the uncanny form of the fable. “A most accomplished liar, that rare stripe who could convincingly relay information running contrary to reality with the utmost sincerity.” Lucy is a natural hero for a book set in a world where nothing is what it seems at first glance. In the wake of his father’s death, Lucy dons his sheepskin cap, packs his pipe and boards a train to the hinterlands with little more than a freshly broken heart and a penchant for fibbing. “Something to happen,” Lucy says, and with that, the visitor inhales the grave sickness and transfers it to the boy’s father, setting into motion Patrick deWitt’s fabulist new novel, “Undermajordomo Minor.”
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