[Exley leads a] trouble-seeking, trouble-rich existence [in Pages From a Cold Island]. He is always putting, indeed pushing, his foot in it. Everything with him is more than enough, or less than enough; there is no unqualified enough. But as he describes his embarrassing, often comic, occasionally joyful meetings with the strangers he drags or tickles out of the blue, as he tells of the intimacy with the strangers that seems to constitute most of the intimacy he knows, he reminds us that a large part of the trouble he discovers is trouble we, too, have had, and that much of the rest is trouble we haven't the nerve to seek. Most of us have adversity thrust upon us; Exley achieves it.

He makes the most of this achievement in his books. He is a kind of redeemer, exonerating our mischievous wishes, and less frequent acts, while experiencing...