Cast in Doubt Book

While the tumultuous 1970s rock the world around them, a collection of aging expatriates linger in a quiet town on the island of Crete, where they have escaped their pasts and their present. Among them is Horace, a gay American writer who fears he has finally reached old age. Friends only frustrate him, and his youthful Greek lover provides little satisfaction. Idling his time away with alcohol and working on a pulp novel that he will never finish, Horace feels closer than ever to his own sorry end.

That is, until a young, enigmatic American woman named Helen joins his crowd of outsiders. In Helen, Horace discovers someone brilliant, beautiful, and stubbornly mysterious — in short, she becomes his absolute obsession.

But as Horace knows, people have a way of preserving their secrets even as they try to forget them. Soon, Helen’s past begins to follow her to Crete. A suicidal ex-lover appears without warning; whispers of her long-dead sister surface in local gossip; and signs of ancient Gypsy rituals come to the fore. Helen vanishes. Deep down, Horace knows that he must find her before he can find any peace within himself.

Publishers Weekly

Horace, a gay American crime novelist in his 60s who is given to drinking and depression, narrates this tale of his obsessive fascination with Helen, an enigmatic, sexually freewheeling 20-year-old who comes to teach English on Crete, where Horace presides over a motley band of expatriates. When she abruptly disappears, he sets off through southern Crete to find her. Does Helen, a psychiatrist's daughter, feel guilty about her sister's alleged suicide? Is she traveling under an assumed name? As Horace wrestles with these and other questions, this philosophical thriller, set in the years 1975-1980, bogs down in literary chitchat and digressions about Gertrude Stein, Andy Warhol, politics, Horace's dreams and his novels. The colorful cast includes a South African poet and anti-apartheid activist, a cranky English hermit, a former singer, Horace's surly young Greek boyfriend and Helen's spurned suitor, a failed suicide. Tillman ( Haunted Houses ) casts doubt on the basis of human cognition and our subjective knowledge of other people, but her focus on a rather stereotypical gay male sensibility diminishes this literate, diverting story. Author tour. (Sept.)