IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND, essayist/novelist Hoagland's last novel

IN THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND
EDWARD HOAGLAND
Arcade Publishing
$22.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Sixty years after the publication of his first novel, Cat Man, Edward Hoagland is publishing his twenty-fifth book at the age of eighty-three. This capstone novel, set in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, introduces Press, a stockbroker going blind. Press has lost his job and his wife and is trying to figure out his next move, holed up in his Vermont cabin surrounded by a hippie commune, drug runners, farmers-gone-bust, blood-thirsty auctioneers, and general ne’er-do-wells. Solace and purpose come from the unlikeliest sources as he learns to navigate his new landscape without sight. Hoagland himself is going blind, and through this evocative, unsentimental novel, we experience the world closing in around Press, the rising panic of uncertainty, the isolation of exile, the increasing dependence upon the kindness of strangers, and a whole new appreciation of the world just beyond sight.

My Review: First, read this:

Press tucked necessities into an overnight bag and climbed in, cane and all, not omitting his passport. "Gone fishing" was what they said here. The smell was of sandwiches and coffee, but he sniffed for clues of who the car had belonged to before. A lady, a plasterer? Chuck drove east toward New Hampshire with careless aplomb, like a man who might put fifty thousand miles on a car's odometer every year or two. Blindness curtained much of the beauty they were passing but not his sense that it was there. White spots checkered his vision. How did people manage blind from youth?

Let me assure you that there's nothing in that excerpt to spoil your read. The novelist's last publication, though he is still alive as of 2021. Poignant story, as Hoagland is himself going blind (on top of a life-long stammer). Interesting in a terrifying way that it's an historical novel set in the Nixon era. All the accustomed Hoagland phrase-making is there in full force: “The milking machines sounded tranquilizing, and there was the collegiality of seventy animal spirits thriving, warming the barn with cud-chewing, nose-snuffling, and sisterly mammalhood.”

Well worth the eyeblinks.