In this, his latest novel, he has achieved a spectacular tour de force, the story of a man who goes backward through his life to find, only at the beginning of it, what the ending was all about. Piling suspense on suspense, Mr. Elliott unravels the past of a television producer who has, ostensibly, vanished. With ever-increasing shock at the revelations, the reader learns why George's wife seem so resigned to his disappearance, why his mother gave him the obscene poetry on her deathbed; why his belief in love had been so shattered by the failing movie actor; why George was summoned after the drunken playwright attempted suicide: how the men and women whom he knew- as a child in Connecticut, as a young man and as a professional success in New York City-touched him, molded him, made him "the man who got away."
This is the most brilliant performance yet from a writer whose each new book adds to his prestige.