We can read only so many books in a lifetime; we can choose but a few dozen authors to whom to attach our loyalty. We think we find some of these early in that striking first novel, but they often can't go the distance. Some we tumble to when they hit their strides in mid-career. Some die young. And some accompany us the whole journey, enlightening all we encounter along the way. Ward Just is one of the latter. He never fails to have something to say to me just when it needs saying, and he never fails to say it in a way that makes me realize I knew it all the time.

Just's new novel Forgetfulness is so good, so full of so much that matters, that I might be content for both of us to die right now. It may never get any better. But that, of course, is partly what this novel is all about; it doesn't get better – it gets very bad...but then it gets better again. We learn to find those ways that we need to keep going; some require forgetfulness, and some need a deep and intractable memory.

Thomas Railles is a portrait artist of some renown living an expatriate life on the French side of the Pyrenees. In his 60's he has migrated from a typical youth in small town Wisconsin, through the college drop-out New York City art world, to the calm of a contented marriage to a French woman from his village. Life, however, does not allow for prolonged contentment; and his wife Florette falls during a solitary mountain winter walk, breaks her ankle, and is "rescued" by four itinerant Moroccans on a mission to complete an act of terrorism in Holland. Hampered by trying to carry her down the snowy, slippery path, they instead slit her throat as she slips into unconsciousness from the cold and pain.

The novel begins with Florette's fall. Just gives us only her perceptions of what is happening and her memories of what her life has been, and so we learn all we need to know of the facts of the situation and the basis of the relationship between Thomas and Florette. The first two sentences present Just's world concisely: "The way down was hard, the trail winding and slick underfoot, insecure. Late autumn, the air cold, no breeze, the setting sun casting long shadows, deceptive in the gathering darkness." It is a world that is "insecure," "deceptive," "winding," "cold," and full of "shadows." It is our world; Americans post-9/11: frightened, arrogant, angry, vengeful, unwilling to forget – or forgive.

As the story unfolds, the simple life of Railles and Florette proves not so simple at all. Railles has been a part-time agent of the U.S. Government at the request of his two oldest childhood friends who live and work in the shadowy silence of America's intricate world policing force. They offer to find Florette's killers and allow Railles to achieve whatever "justice" and "closure" he needs or wants. But he doesn't know what he needs; he is unsure of anything but his sense of emptiness. "Not one death or a hundred deaths, silent or noisy deaths, public or private deaths could bring him consolation. What nonsense to speak of consolation. The dead had consolation for eternity, but the living went on living with the consequences of the lives they had made for themselves, and consolation didn't come into it." At least so felt Thomas early after the death of Florette.

Time passes. Railles retreats with some success into his painting and a billiards table left him by his reclusive neighbor who had his own past to forget – or not. But then he gets the cryptic message from his clandestine friends that the Moroccans have been detained by the French police and he is welcome to participate in the interrogation at Le Havre. Reluctantly he goes and discovers that perhaps there is more desire for vengeance deep within him than he thought. Face to face with Florette's killers, he finds himself almost able to thrash them to death with the French tools of "police work" at his disposal... almost. But he finally walks away and leaves them to the very competent French interrogator who he knows will see to their punishment without him.

Seeing the Evil in the flesh which he had only been imagining since the loss of his wife releases Thomas to move forward with his life. He returns to the United States but without much reason. He reflects on the shaded past of his French neighbor: "What brings us anywhere? You take one turn instead of another, you meet one woman instead of another, you have good health or you don't, luck vies with misfortune, you break down and arrive at Bellevue in your bathrobe on a Saturday morning or – what was his father's antique phrase? – you pulled up your socks and got on with things. Your heart adapted to changing times. Your body did. Or it did not and you passed your days in a muffler of regret."

The novel does not end here, but a review should. Just has filled this book with small and large moments of significance. In a short novel of only a few active characters, he has captured the nuances of painting, loss, sickness, vengeance, war, love, place and setting. He has done this before in all of his books (even explicitly in the title of his story collection Honor, Power, Riches, Fame, and the Love of Women – an excellent book.) Forgetfulness, however, is in a class by itself for the way the writing is so carefully appropriate and the characters and plot so balanced. When such powerful new work comes from such a reliable companion, I can only rest sated awhile and patiently await his next book.

Review by Bruce Jacobs, September 7, 2006