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This is the strange and beautiful story of Morgan, a chameleon of a man still in
search of his own identity.
The novel opens at a church fair puppet show with the Cinderella puppet stopping abruptly
because of the puppeteer's onset of labor. A man from the audience ends up
delivering the baby of Emily and Leon, but the man they know as Dr. Morgan has
"sailor outfits, soldier outfits, riverboat-gambler outfits" and has masqueraded
as many other people.
"You could say he was a man who had gone to pieces, or maybe he'd always been in
pieces; maybe he'd arrived unassembled. Various parts of him seemed poorly
joined together. His lean, hairy limbs were connected by exaggerated knobs of
bone; his black-bearded jaw was as clumsily hinged as a nutcracker. Parts of
his life, too, lay separate from other parts. His wife knew almost none of his
friends. His children had never seen where he worked; it wasn't in a safe part
of town, their mother said. Last month's hobby --- the restringing of a damaged
pawnshop banjo, with an eye to becoming suddenly musical at the age of forty-two --- bore
no resemblance to this month's hobby, which was the writing of a science-fiction novel
that would make him rich and famous."
An uncommon man, Morgan tries to go back to his common life, but thoughts of Emily and
Leon interfere. Over the next few years, as he grapples with the confines of
domesticity, Morgan secretly observes Emily and Leon from afar until he is forced out in
the open. Morgan's life has been made up of many different roles, but now, as
he is drawn closer and closer to Emily, he must assume his most challenging role ever ---
himself.
MORGAN'S PASSING is a novel of intelligence and humor, all told with Tyler's unique
infusion of empathy, irony, and dramatic tension.
--- Reviewed by Jami Edwards
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