Not as wonderful as Lolly Willowes, but that's a high bar. But it's another beautiful example of what Warner is so great at: ordinary, overlooked, well-intentioned people - spinsters, clerks - who get their shot at breaking out of the trap they have been in most of their lives. Late in life, Timothy Fortune feels a call to take up a missionary's work in a remote south seas island. He is gentle, kind-hearted, and always means well. So are the indigenous inhabitants of the island - who welcome him, and mostly cheerfully and politely ignore him. One adolescent boy, Lueli, is curious about the stranger, hangs around him, becomes fond of him, and Fortune thinks he has a convert. But who has converted whom? For Lueli, in his innocence and pliability, stirs a certain passion in Fortune. And yet... Lueli cannot quite be possessed, and cannot be persuaded away from his deep and lifelong beliefs, to a nearly tragic extent. Fortune must come to grips with his own values, and those of the people he has tried to entice away from theirs, and comes away desolate, yet freed... sort of. In the sequel, The Salutation, we catch up with Fortune as he literally drifts across the planet, taking odd jobs on ships, wandering up and down North and South America. In Maggot, we have Fortune among others, on the fringes of a community. In Salutation, he is mostly alone, crossing huge expanses of harsh, empty country, finally settling in an eccentric boarding house. He confronts his solitude, tiring of dragging a heavy garment of grief that he has not been able to put on and learn to wear. It is searingly, gorgeously sad.

With another pitch-perfect cover by one of Prinzhorn's "insane" artists, murdered by the Nazis. ( )

This was an NPR recommended book and not widely available (I had to go to the UA library). Easy to read, a bit simplistic and tedious at times. The book was a predictable commentary, once again, on the folly of Christian missionary and attitude toward other cultures. It may have been intended to be a commentary on the weakness of man, but I interpret it as the weakness of religion imposing unnatural expectations on man. ( )

First published in 1927, this is classic satire from one of the great writers of the 20th Century. Answering the call of God, Mr. Fortune sets out to convert the inhabitants of a small island in the South Pacific. The results are both hilarious and deeply moving. For fans of E. F. Benson, Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark.

The novel, "Mr. Fortune's Maggot," grew on me as I read it and began to appreciate the subtly different levels at which Sylvia Townsend Warner was writing. It tells the tale of Timothy Fortune, a bank clerk who becomes a minister and, after spending a decade in a missionary community on a South Sea island, feels compelled to travel to Fanua, an island that has no experience with western settlement and "civilizations" and whose denizens lead a life of leisure and pleasure since the climate is benign and food is readily at hand, to try his hand at converting these happy people to Christianity. Naive and psychologically somewhat crippled, Mr. Fortune thinks he has made a convert when a young boy, Lueili, comes to observe his religious rites and then stays. As time passes, Mr. Fortune thinks he is teaching him Christianity, having no other way to understand the boy's interest in spending time with him. Then, as more time goes on, Mr. Fortune grows to enjoy his life of relative leisure and his friendship with Lueli, becoming less interested in converting the other Fanuans, until he makes a discovery that shocks him about Lueli, followed immediately by other disasters. Through this process, Mr. Fortune learns a lot about himself, his faith, love, and the pleasure of enjoying life instead of following what is perceived as duty. Subtly, Townsend Warner is also commenting on colonialism and the English approach to people of other countries.

As a reader, I had to suspend disbelief that the Fanuans obviously speak and understand English. And although I found the novel not as wickedly funny as [Lolly Willowes], I did enjoy it.

In the novella, "The Salutation," we find Mr. Fortune, tormented by his thoughts and memories, turning up in South America, and finding a measure of comfort.

(Note: This book, published by NYRB, includes both the novel "Mr. Fortune's Maggot" and the novella "The Salutation." NYRB has recently reissued the same combination under the title "Mr. Fortune.")