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"The entire wall becomes part of a very demanding, rigorous and yet terrifically exuberant composition," she says. "Isn't it exuberant?" Indeed, the gallery feels cheerful — and, at the same time, serene.

Kelly himself was not feeling so cheerful the day museum director Kosinski spoke of exuberance. He'd been at a Phillips dinner the night before, felt ill the next morning, and went back home to Spencertown, N.Y. He missed the 90th-birthday party the museum put together, with champagne, birthday cake and the obligatory birthday song.

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If only Huston had kept to these meticulously drawn action sequences, which punctuate the narrative with a forward-moving drive. But the action comes bracketed with a load of rhetoric, page after page tricked out in a blinding avalanche of lists of 21st century mishaps and mayhem that sounds like a blend of William Gibsonish future patter and Thomas Pynchonesque conspiracy mash. Take this description of material from a cache of maps that Jae finds in a file box, once the property of a murdered high-level CIA boss. "Brazil highlighted, undersea telecom cable landings and several mineral resources. Battery grade manganese, niobium, etc. India. Chromite mines. Pharmaceuticals manufacturing, chemotherapy agents," and then an info-dump of TOP SECRET CIA files. "War. Inlet. Penultimate. Cause. Contraction. Tides. Resources ... Bio-disaster event horizon. Liquid metal fast breeder reactor. Orbital mirror array. Al Qaeda franchise structure. Black start. Neutron poison ..." This keeps on pouring from the page, eventually overwhelming the physical action itself.

"What has happened before," Huston writes, "are any number of things that feel similar. 9/11. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. London subway bombings. Bombay attack. Madrid bombings. Asian Tsunami. European heat wave. Darfur. Somali pirates" and so on — and on — into a novel I couldn't wait to read and ultimately found terribly disappointing. Alas, like that drug Dreamer from Huston's previous work, it put me to sleep.

Read an excerpt of Skinner

Many whose attendance in God's house on a weekly basis was mandatory will sympathize with the young Jeffrey banging his head against the pew in boredom or furtively reading human biology books in his father's office. Or with the a-w-k-w-a-r-d scene in which he shares his newfound apostasy with his parents — an announcement that meets with silent, blank stares.

On the other hand, Brown conveys his own sense of the divine in small moments: a stubbed toe, fear of bugs, a confusing childhood memory, acts of kindness in everyday life. These trifles are infused with meaning and cherished by the author in a way that evokes the New Testament notion of Jesus in all things — but for Brown, without the Jesus part. He acknowledges, in another series of panels overlooking glorious mountain vistas, that where others see God's presence he sees beauty and wonder, but not a celestial presence.

Like all accomplished serial memoirists, Brown has mastered the art of mining the same veins of material over and over — looking at the same incidents from a different vantage point, highlighting a new stream of consciousness, focusing on an event that took place offstage in a previous work or with added bathos, in this case, abetted by the birth of his son. With each new round of toil he extracts new, rough-hewn gems — of which A Matter of Life is the most profound.

Did I mention that Brown's work is hilarious? That you will smile and laugh throughout? That you'll be inspired by the Brown family's goodness and gentle relationship with each other and the world? Reading this is a joy. Rereading it is, too.

Read an excerpt of A Matter Of Life

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