Lee Smith's Fancy Strut marks a departure and homecoming. Her first novel—The Last Day the Dogbushes Bloomed—traces a Southern childhood, the story of Susan Tobey, who fancies a dreamworld of royalty and sunlight, even as her family disintegrates, even as her own imagination darkens and closes in on her. The second—Something in the Wind—is a novel of adolescence, Brooke Kincaid's, from boarding school in Virginia to university. Brooke too lives a vicarious life, through her friend and soul-mate Charles, who has died in a car crash. Brooke would also die to the world, embalmed in beer and shrouded in self-pity. She chooses not to understand, retiring in pain and madness…. Brooke's wish is to be left alone, not to "live in the world"; Susan Tobey would "see everything" but have "nothing … see me." Neither will feel or cry. Both would "live underground."…

In Fancy...