Fell Down

Too bad this one is out of print, because I really thought it was very interesting. Fell is in a funk, contemplating leaving the school (sorry, blanked on its name) that had previously brought him so much happiness, including membership in its exclusive club, Sevens. He returns to Seaside with Keats, his ex-girlfriend, and becomes immersed in learning about the mysterious disappearance of a former Sevens member from the forties. The chapters alternate between Fell's point of view and that of a ventriloquist's dummy, which is used to provide a first-person account of the lives of the two Sevens members in the past. (Not nearly as dumb as it sounds.) Anyway, the story really was very interesting, and Fell's melancholy is realistic and makes sense in light of what's happened to him in the two previous "Fell" novels. The reason it only gets 4 stars, however, is that I still don't understand how we made the leap from wondering how the Sevens guy disappeared to knowing how it happened--suddenly, Fell was telling us, with no sense of drama to revealing something that had driven us through the book! I like subtlety, but not so much that I have to re-read the book to find out if I was paying enough attention! (I was, it was just vague.)