Reunion [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION When I first read Fred Uhlman's Reunion some years ago, I wrote to the author (whom I only knew hy reputation as a painter) that I considered it a minor masterpiece. The qualifying adjective needs perhaps a word of explanation. It was meant to refer to the small size of the hook, and to the impression that although its theme was the ugliest tragedy in man's history, it was written in a nostalgic minor key. By its format, Reunion is neither a novel nor a short story, but a novell^ an art form more appreciated on the Continent than here. It lacks the bulk and panoramic quality of the novel, but it is not a short story either, because the latter generally deals with an episode, a fragment of life, whereas the novella aspires to he something more complete — a novel in miniature. In this respect Fred Uhlman succeeds admirably — perhaps because painters know how to adapt composition to the size of the canvas, whereas writers, unfortunately, have an unlimited supply of paper.