Bring Home the Bride by Gale Wilhelm (Morrow, 1961)

 

Another beautifully etched book by this extraordinary and sadly forgotten author, who writes in a brilliantly honed and elegantly succinct style about how people relate to one another and the world around them.

Carol is a a young, beautiful, and wealthy woman -- she is independent, spirited, sexually experienced and effortlessly charismatic.  While vacationing with her disengaged mother at a mountain hotel in what appears to be the Pacific Northwest, she meets a beautiful young man named Hans who lives in a house he has built for himself on a large compound owned by his father, a famous playwright with whom Carol had a brief affair a year or so before.

Carol and Hans fall immediately and completely (and completely convincingly) in love and get married, and begin living together in Hans' chalet-like house in an idyllic setting.  But secrets from both their pasts (SPOILERS) -- Carol's affair with Hans' father and the potentially dangerous genetic nature of Hans' mother's mental illness -- encroach upon their edenic solitude with eventual tragic results.

Bring Home the Bride is a masterful example of a short novel.  Wilhelm imbues her characters -- through their speech, their actions, and their internal monologues -- with exact and vivid life.  She writes so perfectly and tersely that the book has an authenticity and incandescence that is invigorating and exciting.  Her prose seems to be mentholated and gives the reader (me) a rush.

A rare, curious, perfect book.

Note: it's interesting to me that Wilhelm's books -- published by Knopf and Morrow -- were gorgeously and expensively produced.  These publishers must have known how special Wilhelm's books were, and obviously strove to present them to readers in the most beautiful and sumptuous way.