Little World

The lyrical if diffuse latest from Rowe (after the story collection Here Until August) revolves around the corpse of a girl purported to be a saint. In 1950s Australia, retired carpenter Orrin Bird is willed the preserved remains of an unnamed girl by his late friend Kaspar Isaksen, a leprosy researcher who died of alcoholism. The girl is not officially beatified, nor is Orrin Catholic, but he accepts Kaspar’s bequest and resolves to honor the girl’s legacy. The body secretes tears, which Kaspar used in his leprosy treatments. Orrin maintains the corpse until his death, and she’s later discovered in an abandoned horse trailer in the 1970s by insomniac Matti Eberhart. For Matti, long tormented by the forced adoption of her child when she was much younger, the saint is a “conduit” for her grief, which pours out in a burst of emotion. Rowe’s language is arresting, particularly in her depictions of the saint (“The sound of something unseen within, tinking as if loose.... And something further beneath that, again, denser, sweeter, richer; this side of life but more secret”), but she doesn’t quite elucidate her themes or illuminate her characters’ inner lives. Rowe is a consummate stylist, but this doesn’t make much of an impact. (Aug.)