Book review: Christmas in Austin, by Benjamin Markovits

Benjamin Markovits is a companionable novelist. He likes his characters and invites you to share his liking. He is also a daring one. There are stories in this novel, lots of stories, intertwined and bumping up against each other, but he has dispensed with plot. Plot is unnecessary. Plot belongs to another sort of fiction. Here you are asked to engage in what’s happening now, not to be eager for what happens next. Plot forces life into a certain shape, but lives are seen, or felt, to be shaped only in retrospect. Still it is daring to ask and expect your readers to be interested in what’s happening now rather than wondering what happens next and being eager to find out.