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Show WedyThurs/Fri, August 10-12, 2011 New on the bookshelves Strange doings pervade summer camp in the Ozarks By Dale Singer St. Louis Post-Dispatch Safari," Theroux has walked the walk and followed the Path. (c) 2011, St. Louis Dispatch. "The Curfew" Post- Veteran writer explores nature, history of travel Li To follow up Heaven Lake," his widely praised debut set in China, novelist John Dalton of the University of Missouri- St. Louis has chosen a location much closer to home: a summer camp in the Missouri Ozarks. But the proximity of Kindermann Forest Camp doesn't necessarily make the setting seem any less exotic, given what goes on there. As "The Inverted Forest" opens, it's the summer of 1996 and camp director Schuller Kindermann has just fired most of his staff for cavorting nude around the swimming pool two days before the initial group of campers is supposed to arrive. His hastily hired replacement crew has a big surprise, though. Instead of watching over children, as they had expected, they learn that the summers first crop of campers is made up of adults with severe developmental disabilities. As he introduces us to the campers, counselors and others at Kindermann, Dalton cleverly creates an undercurrent of unease, an almost Hitchcockian feeling that something bad is about to happen. And eventually it does, though some readers may get impatient and feel it takes a little too long to take place. Then, the action shifts forward 15 years, to St. Louis in 2011, where Dalton introduces more surprises, and readers may find that what they thought they understood about the novel may not precisely be true. It's all part of an overall theme of uncertainty and regret, one that is best expressed by Kindermann's, musings on his life's work, about what he views as "a peculiar irony at work in the world: what you lack will always be magnified by the people and events that constitute your life.'1 "The Inverted Forest" doesn't always work. The large number of characters that Dalton introduces sometimes make it hard to keep track of them all and the ending isn't totally satisfying. But the premise is original, and anyone who has ever spent time at a camp in the Ozarks will find familiar situations presented in a seemingly friendly but ultimately unsettling way. "The Tao of Travel: "The Inverted Forest" By John Dalton: Scribner (325 pages, $25) C-9 The Park Record By Gaylord Dold What are you waiting for? THE EREMY COLf AND COUNTRY (c) 201L The Wichita Eagle. A brief peek into a dark future By Lisa McLendon McClmchy Newspapers By Jesse Ball Vintage (195 pages, $14.95) McClatchv Newspapers Some books get described as "rich with detail." "The Enlightenments from Lives Curfew" is not one of those - it's the opposite. But that's on the Road" good, Jesse Ball has a gift for By Paul Theroux Houghton Mifflin Harcourt conveying the complexities of a scary new world in remark(285 pages, $25) ably few words. The story takes place on a Paul Theroux's . latest book, "The Tao of Travel," is single day in an unnamed city a magical compendium of in a not-very-pleasant-soundscribbling, thoughts, sidelong ing future, a police state of rules, violent glances, poetic forays and unwritten compelling arguments con- deaths and abrupt disappearcerning the metaphysical and ances. The curfew referred to physical nature of travel in the title is vague, but menitself, the history of travel acingly real: "The governwriting, along with exemplars ment's official word on the of the greatest insights and matter was nonexistent. observations of both modern There was no curfew. There and ancient travelers, each was simply the declaration. introduced by Theroux's own GOOD CITIZENS PASS marvelous "take" on travel THEIR NIGHTS ABED." and travel writing. William Drysdale is an As a pastime it is unsur- "epitaphorist." (even his job passed; as a reference work it title is a beaut of a word - he will lead the reader to count- helps families come up with less books both mainstream just the right words for tomband recondite. There has stones) since he can no longer been no book like it produced be a violinist; music isn't for the mass market that I can allowed. He lives with his daughter, Molly, who is mute, recall. Theroux's avowed aim, and keeps his head down to stated explicitly in a lovely protect her. His wife, Louisa, preface, is to show "in its disappeared some time earliapproaches to travel, ways of er, and William's only desire is living and thinking loo." to keep Molly's life as normal Thus, the Tao, an ancient and safe as possible. Chinese mystical "path" But on this day, William towards peace and freedom, runs into an old friend, who becomes a metaphor for ways invites him to a meeting - a of undertaking both the spiri- secret, subversive meeting - tual and existential side of with the promise of informahuman life, which is to say, tion about what happened to the "importance of else- his wife. He dithers briefly, where." but the pull is too strong. The Tao of travel is divid- William leaves Molly with the ed into 27 discrete chapters. neighbors and sets out, knowAt regular intervals, the book ing that he might have to launches into a section called break the curfew. ."TraveLWisdom," bits of phi- .,. Ball's hauntingly spare losophy from famous travel- prose in this brief novel gives ers like Henry Fielding, his explorations of everyday Robert Louis Stevenson, life, philosophy, rebellion a Freya Stark and Claude Levi- stark beauty, almost dreamStrauss. each of which is care- like, that belies the horrors fully chosen to illustrate some lurking just underneath the travel dynamic that has surface of this circumscribed caught Theroux's always per- society. This coupled with the wildly imaginative - and yet ceptive eye. Theroux himself has been not unimaginable - storyline at it for 50 years and has writ- leaves us both heartbroken ten some of our boldest, most and hopeful by the end. 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