Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowery (01/09)

This book needs at least three readings: one for the plot, another for the layering, and a third for the lyricism. Nearly all books benefit from multiple readings, but not much popular literature truly demands it. My copy's introduction notes that Lowry uses a sort of statuesque prose style:

This is syntax as architecture, a strained high baroque: it is not to be understood so much as unpacked and paraphrased. It is 'vertical', balanced, stilled in time, not 'horizontal', in flow.

I don't object to that on any grounds - theoretical, aesthetic, whatever - but it makes the reader work for his pleasure. Sometimes the reader wants nothing more than a Philip Roth marital disaster. Straight-forward misery, that is.