The central event in William Maxwell's [So Long, See You Tomorrow] is a violent murder. We are given the particulars in the opening pages. The style is unadorned, reportorial….

If Mr. Maxwell's story were about nothing more than the murder, his presentation of this information so early on might have proved ruinous. But though he writes well and powerfully of the crime, he does not want it to dominate his other concerns. By suppressing an unnecessary element of suspense, he can explore the nature of death, the confusions of childhood, the quality—the very texture—of desire.

The story is told by a narrator looking back on events that occurred fifty years earlier. Once the details of the crime are presented, the narrator tells us about his [own] childhood, of his mother's death in the influenza epidemic of 1918….

At first this shift in the narrative is a bit...