The title of Rodney Hall’s thirteenth novel, Vortex, means to convey something of its considerable formal and thematic ambitions. The implicit promise is that its various elements, however fragmented or disparate they may seem, will converge with the swirling inexorability of a whirlpool or a black hole. As a dynamic metaphor for the novel’s wide-ranging vision of history, the title might be i ... (read more)