Reading Matturro’s “Shepherd” with great pleasure I thought I had come upon a new novelist, always a cause for celebration. But “Shepherd” is in fact Matturro’s seventh novel, and five of the previous six had been published by the Livingston Press without my being aware. This was perhaps because three were set in the Bronze Age and three in upstate New York.
Matturro has the Ph.D. in English, worked at the “Times Union” for years and taught literature at the University at Albany, but his obsession is with the classics and he has in fact rewritten the stories of Perseus, Medea and Helen of Troy, as novels.
Set near the Berkshires, east of Albany, “Shepherd” is not so direct, but the classical spine is still there. Stuart Brown, a recently retired professor of classics, polite but distant, in mourning over the death of his wife, still depressed, goes each morning to the local coffee shop named The Laurel Tree, in Peneus, New York, where he meets Daphne.
The name of the coffee shop and the town should have been a signal, albeit a subtle one. Peneus is in Greek mythology the river god, and Daphne is his daughter. Cupid has caused Apollo to be madly in love with Daphne but he cannot catch her. She finally escapes his pursuits by changing into a laurel tree.
Stuart Brown is not Apollo but he becomes interested, then infatuated, with Daphne, who seems to be a dowdy, fairly simple-minded woman of about 50 who arrives each day by bicycle and does not own a television. She restocks the local supermarket’s shelves each evening. Slowly, Stuart Brown comes to know Daphne, whose last name is Greek, Kastanos. Few would know this, but Stuart does: Kastanos is Greek for brown. What are the chances?
Daphne has, of course, a German shepherd, the smartest and most emotionally mature of all the breeds—protective, faithful, intelligent—named Corin. Stuart slowly realizes Daphne is, like him, wounded. She holds herself aloof, and, he suspects, is not who she appears to be. He investigates. This is the age of Google, after all.
The main plot is a love story, between emotionally vulnerable, fragile people. This is a very quiet novel—not an action thriller—but an insightful, wise and rewarding novel. Stuart learns who Daphne is—or was—and why she has become reclusive. They must together open up, warm to the possibility of affection and trust.
Along the way, however, Matturro has Stuart read and evaluate a new translation of the “Aeneid” and counsel a young man who wants to pursue a doctorate in Classics. His advice is bleak, guarded: only if you MUST. There are no jobs and academic life is a snake pit. No one anymore doubts that. Better to quit and write lovely novels.
