Oslerville

A. D. Crosley

Once again, an excellent idea gets turned on its head and goes horribly, horribly wrong. Crosley attempts here to write an allegory about a big-city doctor, under the burden of a frivolous lawsuit, who gets in his car and just starts riding one weekend, ending up in the town of Oslerville after picking up a hitchhiker, who happens to be on the staff of the medical school there. Oslerville is a utopia, and the protagonist spends most of the book's bulk learning about how wonderful life in Oslerville is, all the while comparing it to the horrible bureaucracy of the big city.

Needless to say, the problem is the presentation—the laying out of the utopian political and social structure IS the story. This is less a novel than an essay that takes parable form. And there has never yet been an essay-as-parable novel that has been in the least palatable. This one is no exception to that rule.