The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone is one of those frustrating books which is often finely written but not always compelling reading. Individual passages can be read and reread and each time appreciated for their craftsmanship, but somehow the book as a whole loses momentum. I found myself pushing my way through it, and at the end there was a feeling less of completion than of missing pieces.

Matt Cohen's return to the rural landscape of Eastern Ontario—to the rocky small farm country near Kingston—picks up the story of characters and families mentioned briefly in his earlier masterwork, The Disinherited. Kitty Malone and Pat Frank have loved and fought each other for twenty years, and have been able neither to bring themselves to marry nor to give each other up. The awareness that they are growing old … causes them to reassess their loves and their...