After the Manner of My Youth by James Lipsey. Patricia Lipsey Publishing, 2005. $12.95 — 248 pp.

All The Flowers Are Dying by Lawrence Block. William Morrow, 2005.
$24.95 — 304 pp.

James Lipsey’s novel, After the Manner of My Youth, tells the story of Harry Redding, a young Mississippian who struggles from the Depression until the present time to find completeness in his life. Harry Redding, whose pharmacist father becomes hooked on drugs, eventually runs away from home and finds himself “adopted” into a loving family. From there we follow him through college and into medical school where he decides to pursue a career in orthopedics. During this time we see Harry marry a girl whom he had once rejected, move to Western North Carolina, practice both medicine and a growing Christian faith, and finally, following retirement, go to work in Saudi Arabia.

Though Lipsey includes a note at the beginning of his novel that his work is neither an autobiography nor a roman a clef, similarities between the fictional Redding and the very real Dr. Lipsey nonetheless exist. Like Redding, Lipsey did practice orthopedics in Western North Carolina. Like Redding, he has an intense interest in religious matters and is the vicar of a traditional Anglican mission in Haywood County.

Both Lipsey’s knowledge of medicine and his fascination with the history and practice of Christianity play a great part in After the Manner of My Youth. As we follow Dr. Redding on his daily rounds or into the operating room, Lipsey gives us multiple insights into the practice of orthopedics. Some may find Lipsey’s stress on technique and medical jargon a little overwhelming — he describes both conditions and cures in great detail — but in many ways it is a pleasure to read a novel in which we learn details about the character’s workplace. Few works of fiction concern themselves with the actual work done by their characters, despite the fact that work takes up an enormous amount of our lives. Lipsey writes about the practice of medicine in a way that rings true without condescending to readers.

In the Christian apologetics that pop up in the book, Lipsey via Redding manages to give us a good deal of information about the traditional Anglican Church, Christian history, and the relationship between religion and science. We watch as the youthful Redding slowly grows more and more aware of what he eventually perceives to be God. He begins his religious speculation by observing nature, telling a high school literature teacher, during a discussion of Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees,” how he has observed patterns and relationships in nature.

Lipsey adds weight to Redding’s reflections on medicine, religion, and people by telling Redding’s story through a series of flashbacks. By folding time upon itself this way, by juxtaposing the present with the past, Lipsey lets us understand the depth of Redding’s interests in these matters. By avoiding a straightforward narrative, Lipsey also shows us how much Redding is aware of the passage of time, how he carries these different times — the 1930s, his medical school days, his love for his wife Diana — with him in the present.

After the Manner of My Youth is flawed in several ways. Occasionally the conversations between characters strike the ear as unrealistic, pedantic and even didactic at times. An inordinate amount of space in the book is also given up to comments on generalized world events that have little to do with the book’s main characters except as background. Shortening or eliminating these broad comments on the Depression and World War II might have strengthened the book.

Despite these shortcomings, After the Manner of My Youth should appeal to any number of readers. Residents of Haywood County, particularly those who were Dr. Lipsey’s patients, would surely take an interest in such a book. Spiritual seekers would find his comments on Christianity and faith different from many other novels. Finally, some readers, despite Dr. Lipsey’s protestations to the contrary, will doubtless take great pleasure in searching this book for friends, enemies, and anyone else they might recognize.

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Regular readers of this column may remember two past reviews, one of them less than enthusiastic, for Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder novels. Block has a new Matt Scudder novel available, All The Flowers Are Dying, and I am delighted to report that Matt Scudder is back, a little older, slightly slower, but still ready to duke it out with bad guys and his own particular demons.

Although readers should have no trouble guessing the murderer in All The Flowers Are Dying before he is revealed, this story is still vintage Scudder. A man in Virginia is executed for three murders, but did he actually commit the killings or was he framed? What are his ties to the killer of one of Scudder’s friends? Who is the killer really pursuing? The clues start coming together for Scudder, and he soon realizes that he and his wife, Elaine, are in a battle for their lives.

Lawrence Block, author of several dozen books, has another winner in this one. The flowers may be dying, but Block still has a lot of life left in him.

(Jeff Minick is a writer and teacher. He may be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com.)