The Archivist

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Matthias is a man of orderly ways, a librarian whose life rarely strays from its narrow channels. At the library where he works is an archive of letters from the poet T.S. Eliot to an American woman, written during the years Eliot was undertaking "Four Quartets" and wrestling with problems of marriage and of faith. When a young poet comes to the library wanting to see the letters she unsettles Matthias's composure and brings back long-buried memories of a disastrous relationship years earlier. Matthias' marriage to Judith in the years following World War II forms the core of this novel. Despite their differences -- Judith is unruly, an artist -- their shared love of poetry and jazz at first lends strength to their bond. But their good intentions cannot bridge their essential divergences. A growing alienation is complicated by Judith's increasingly erratic behavior, which culminates in a severe breakdown and her incarceration in a mental hospital. Judith's own voice, in the form of a journal she kept in the hospital, is the transfixing middle passage of this novel.