"In a Shallow Grave" is a modern Book of Revelation, filled with prophesies, visions and demoniac landscapes. The moon appears to Garnet [the narrator] "by daylight, horned and angry and discolored." The novel itself is "horned" like Garnet's daytime moon. It holds us because we are stuck in the powerful, swaying rhythms of Garnet's voice.

This comes as a surprise, because Purdy's most recent novels, "The House of the Solitary Maggot" and "I Am Elijah Thrush," have been cranky, meandering exercises. The books tend to creak. They reflect in a sorry way the beautiful, ribbed dream world of "Malcolm," Purdy's first novel.

The new book perhaps will bring to Purdy the wider audience he deserves. Written in a sparse yet rough-edged style, it indicates the dilemmas of Purdy's writing. There have always been briers in his voice, as if he meant to tear at his readers with a...