For six decades William Maxwell's fiction took as its subject the vanished world of early-twentieth-century Midwestern life. He was no nostalgic archaeologist, however, unearthing sentimental relics for facile effect; his fiction is distinguished by an intuitive awareness of the subtle emotional currents of domestic life. Shattering events dominate Maxwell's novels--a mother's death, crippling accidents, a suicide attempt, adultery, and murder--but these catastrophes are never exploited for their potential to shock. His plain, spare prose style draws readers, and his novels delineate marital and familial affections with extraordinary accuracy. Although all of his novels except The Château (1961) depict the landscape of his childhood, they transcend autobiography. Maxwell always separated unadorned recollection from imagination ("the landscape in which the facts take place") and said that his novels do not "represent an intention to hand over the whole of my life. They are fragments in which I am a...