From Publishers Weekly
The lepidopterist Russ Darlington, who stands at the center of Leithauser's novel in verse, is torn between Wordsworth's nature ("Nature never did betray the heart that loved her") and Darwin's, with its vulgarized slogan, "survival of the fittest." Leithauser uses 10-line stanzas to take us from the Booth Tarkington-like Indiana of Russ's birth in 1888 to his second marriage, in the 1930s. Russ shows an early inclination to study nature and more specifically, butterflies, finding an ally in an eccentric Austrian exile, Professor Schrock, who tutors him in German and natural science. At Old University, it becomes clear that Russ is meant to be a professor. Unfortunately, he falls for and marries the flirtatious Pauline Beaudette, who is surely not meant to be a professor's wife. But before their temperamental differences become too evident, Russ sets out for Malaya to collect butterflies. He never makes it. On the Pacific island of Ponape, hunting a stray Morpho, he falls and is crippled. Once he comes home, he separates from Pauline, making a bachelor nest with his father. Leithauser leads us up to the 1930s, when Russ, alone and debilitated, proposes to his maid, and then, in a long coda, he combines Russ's dream on the night before his second marriage with Leithauser's own journey to Ponape. Russ's vision of life as "a sort of swap-shop/ an auction run without an auctioneer" is a view of chance and selection regretfully purified of Wordsworthian sentiment and very much in tune with our own neo-Darwinian times. 12 line drawings by Mark Leithauser. (Mar. 27)Forecast: Though Leithauser's latest is more accessible than its form might suggest, it lacks the sense of urgency and invention that encouraged readers of Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red to brave a book-length poem. For inveterate fans only. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Leithauser is a rare literary talent, equally at home in verse or prose, as shown by his distinguished publication record five novels, four books of poetry, and one book of essays. His latest effort is a successful hybrid of all his talents: a novel in verse that is sumptuously detailed, highly readable, and studded with authorial intrusions revealing Leithauser's biographical connection to the events of the narrative. Leithauser tells a powerful love story centered on Russ Darlington, an Indiana entomologist and child prodigy whose career was cut short by a tragic accident on a Polynesian island. That was his first "fall"; the second was falling in love with his beautiful young housekeeper, Marja. The lucky reader will delight in the "dailiness and rootedness" of the narrative and the occasional transcendent "moment of dizziness stirred by sympathy." Strongly recommended for all collections. Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Decatur, ILCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Leithauser's novels, most recently A Few Corrections [BKL Ap 15 01], are treasured for their genial charm, prismatic magic, and fine craft, qualities ripe and bountiful in this ambrosial novel-in-verse. With four volumes of poetry and five prose novels to his credit, Leithauser has masterfully wedded the two genres and created a poetic narrative so silky and enchanting that its formal complexities--unobtrusive use of rhyme, lovely musicality--flow just below the radar of consciousness, leaving behind a mental caress. The succinctly told yet psychologically nuanced, philosophically compelling, and downright romantic tale begins in Indiana in 1895 when seven-year-old nature lover Russell Darlington catches an astonishing butterfly. Solitary and very serious, he's galvanized by his find, as is his lonely, pipe-smoke-wreathed widower father. Soon the budding scientist has a mentor, a strange and gluttonous entomologist with a disfigured face; then, after college, Darlington embarks on his first and last tropical expedition. Darlington's falls from and into grace are both catastrophic and sublime, and his potentially melodramatic story evolves, by virtue of Leithauser's keen perceptions into life's ruthlessness and beauty, fascination with science, and sheer pleasure in language, into a stunning meditation on randomness, adaptation, and joy. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"An amazing merger of art and science, verse and narrative. Leithauser has invented a stanza as accommodating and mobile as prose, which yet rewards us, if we listen, with the music of rhyme. Prose could not have provided a narrative so richly embroidered, so darting and animated in its impulses and inspirations, so glitteringly exact in its evocations of nature. Not since Nabokov has the miracle of consciousness been celebrated with such erudite passion, such lofty wit."
–John Updike

“Darlington’s Fall [should be recognized] for its daring and achievement, its range of language and imagery, its moments of gliding beauty, and the gift for storytelling that unfolds in it.”
–W. S. Merwin, New York Review of Books

“A tour de force…Poetic art helps Leithauser to meet what is perhaps the greatest challenge confronting a novelist whose character lives as much in the mind as in the world. The ancient resources of verse lend glamour and solidity to what might have been a prosaic description of the joy of discovery.”
–Michael Lind, The Washington Post Book World

“Darlington’s Fall by Brad Leithauser is one of the best novels I have read in years–rich in characterization, compelling in the shape and drive of its story, intellectually and verbally diverse.” –David Mason, The Hudson Review

“Leithauser has allowed himself to fall under the spell of the story of a [late-Victorian] Midwestern naturalist who dreams great dreams. The result is charming and quite wonderful.” –Jonathan Levi, L.A. Times Book Review

“A poetic narrative so silky and enchanting that its formal complexities–unobtrusive use of rhyme, lovely musicality–flow just below the radar of consciousness, leaving behind a mental caress.” –Donna Seaman, Booklist

“Witty and elegant . . . lucid and rhythmically deft.”
–David Yezzi, Wall Street Journal

“Leithauser probably could have written a textbook, too, with all the butterfly research he apparently did. But he wears his learning lightly . . . The irregularly rhymed stanza he uses here is strict enough to strain out unnecessary detail but flexible enough to accommodate grand descriptive flourishes . . . Darlington’s Fall is not just coherent, but tight.”
–Eric McHenry, New York Times Book Review

“Leithauser has happily resolved the problem of making a unity between verse and fiction. The book is definitely a page-turner; the author’s artful plotting holds the reader’s curiosity. The period details are wonderfully convincing..”
–Phoebe Pettingell, The New Leader

“All the charm and complexity of an Ozark Swallowtail. . .There’s nothing Leithauser can’t catch in this net of verse.” –Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor

“Leithauser reveals astonishing inventiveness and flexibility . . . Darlington’s Fall is extremely clever, yet its adroitness is more than matched by the risks of its narrative leaps and by its passion and humanity.” –Frederic Koeppel, The Memphis Commercial Appeal

“Essentially a love story, Darlington’s Fall is also a fascinating meditation on chance, natural selection, the nature of science and art, the evolution of species–and the human individual.” –Nature Conservancy

“It’s always fun to greet a book that’s fresh and original . . . The rhyming strategy reflects wit and good sense . . . and the slow, heaving, eonslong drama of geological time known as evolution creates a force field that keeps booming in our psyches long after we close Darlington’s Fall. If that isn’t a bookshopper’s bargain, what is?”
–Peter Wolfe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch





Review
"An amazing merger of art and science, verse and narrative. Leithauser has invented a stanza as accommodating and mobile as prose, which yet rewards us, if we listen, with the music of rhyme. Prose could not have provided a narrative so richly embroidered, so darting and animated in its impulses and inspirations, so glitteringly exact in its evocations of nature. Not since Nabokov has the miracle of consciousness been celebrated with such erudite passion, such lofty wit."
?John Updike

?Darlington?s Fall [should be recognized] for its daring and achievement, its range of language and imagery, its moments of gliding beauty, and the gift for storytelling that unfolds in it.?
?W. S. Merwin, New York Review of Books

?A tour de force?Poetic art helps Leithauser to meet what is perhaps the greatest challenge confronting a novelist whose character lives as much in the mind as in the world. The ancient resources of verse lend glamour and solidity to what might have been a prosaic description of the joy of discovery.?
?Michael Lind, The Washington Post Book World

?Darlington?s Fall by Brad Leithauser is one of the best novels I have read in years?rich in characterization, compelling in the shape and drive of its story, intellectually and verbally diverse.? ?David Mason, The Hudson Review

?Leithauser has allowed himself to fall under the spell of the story of a [late-Victorian] Midwestern naturalist who dreams great dreams. The result is charming and quite wonderful.? ?Jonathan Levi, L.A. Times Book Review

?A poetic narrative so silky and enchanting that its formal complexities?unobtrusive use of rhyme, lovely musicality?flow just below the radar of consciousness, leaving behind a mental caress.? ?Donna Seaman, Booklist

?Witty and elegant . . . lucid and rhythmically deft.?
?David Yezzi, Wall Street Journal

?Leithauser probably could have written a textbook, too, with all the butterfly research he apparently did. But he wears his learning lightly . . . The irregularly rhymed stanza he uses here is strict enough to strain out unnecessary detail but flexible enough to accommodate grand descriptive flourishes . . . Darlington?s Fall is not just coherent, but tight.?
?Eric McHenry, New York Times Book Review

?Leithauser has happily resolved the problem of making a unity between verse and fiction. The book is definitely a page-turner; the author?s artful plotting holds the reader?s curiosity. The period details are wonderfully convincing..?
?Phoebe Pettingell, The New Leader

?All the charm and complexity of an Ozark Swallowtail. . .There?s nothing Leithauser can?t catch in this net of verse.? ?Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor

?Leithauser reveals astonishing inventiveness and flexibility . . . Darlington?s Fall is extremely clever, yet its adroitness is more than matched by the risks of its narrative leaps and by its passion and humanity.? ?Frederic Koeppel, The Memphis Commercial Appeal

?Essentially a love story, Darlington?s Fall is also a fascinating meditation on chance, natural selection, the nature of science and art, the evolution of species?and the human individual.? ?Nature Conservancy

?It?s always fun to greet a book that?s fresh and original . . . The rhyming strategy reflects wit and good sense . . . and the slow, heaving, eonslong drama of geological time known as evolution creates a force field that keeps booming in our psyches long after we close Darlington?s Fall. If that isn?t a bookshopper?s bargain, what is??
?Peter Wolfe, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"The hero of this one-of-a-kind novel is Russel Darlington, a born naturalist and an unlikely romantic hero. We meet him in the year 1895 - a seven-year-old boy first glimpsed chasing a frog through an Indiana swamp. And we follow this idealistic, appealing man for nearly forty years: into college and over the Rockies in pursuit of a new species of butterfly; through a clumsy courtship and into a struggling marriage; across the Pacific, where on a tiny, rainy island he suffers a nightmarish accident; through the deaths of friends and family and into a seemingly hopeless passion for an unapproachable young woman." Darlington's Fall is ultimately a love story. It is written in verse that - vivid, accessible, and lush - imparts an intensity to the story and its luminous gallery of characters: Russel's rich, taciturn, upright, guilt-driven father; Miss Kraus, his formidable housekeeper; Ernst Schrock, his maddening, gluttonous mentor; and Pauline Beaudette, the beautiful, ill-starred girl who becomes his wife. Leithauser's embracingly compassionate outlook invites us into their world - into a past so sharply realized it feels like the present.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

The lepidopterist Russ Darlington, who stands at the center of Leithauser's novel in verse, is torn between Wordsworth's nature ("Nature never did betray the heart that loved her") and Darwin's, with its vulgarized slogan, "survival of the fittest." Leithauser uses 10-line stanzas to take us from the Booth Tarkington-like Indiana of Russ's birth in 1888 to his second marriage, in the 1930s. Russ shows an early inclination to study nature and more specifically, butterflies, finding an ally in an eccentric Austrian exile, Professor Schrock, who tutors him in German and natural science. At Old University, it becomes clear that Russ is meant to be a professor. Unfortunately, he falls for and marries the flirtatious Pauline Beaudette, who is surely not meant to be a professor's wife. But before their temperamental differences become too evident, Russ sets out for Malaya to collect butterflies. He never makes it. On the Pacific island of Ponape, hunting a stray Morpho, he falls and is crippled. Once he comes home, he separates from Pauline, making a bachelor nest with his father. Leithauser leads us up to the 1930s, when Russ, alone and debilitated, proposes to his maid, and then, in a long coda, he combines Russ's dream on the night before his second marriage with Leithauser's own journey to Ponape. Russ's vision of life as "a sort of swap-shop/ an auction run without an auctioneer" is a view of chance and selection regretfully purified of Wordsworthian sentiment and very much in tune with our own neo-Darwinian times. 12 line drawings by Mark Leithauser. (Mar. 27) Forecast: Though Leithauser's latest is more accessible than its form might suggest, it lacks the sense of urgency and invention that encouraged readers of Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red to brave a book-length poem. For inveterate fans only. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Leithauser is a rare literary talent, equally at home in verse or prose, as shown by his distinguished publication record five novels, four books of poetry, and one book of essays. His latest effort is a successful hybrid of all his talents: a novel in verse that is sumptuously detailed, highly readable, and studded with authorial intrusions revealing Leithauser's biographical connection to the events of the narrative. Leithauser tells a powerful love story centered on Russ Darlington, an Indiana entomologist and child prodigy whose career was cut short by a tragic accident on a Polynesian island. That was his first "fall"; the second was falling in love with his beautiful young housekeeper, Marja. The lucky reader will delight in the "dailiness and rootedness" of the narrative and the occasional transcendent "moment of dizziness stirred by sympathy." Strongly recommended for all collections. Daniel L. Guillory, Millikin Univ., Decatur, IL Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews