Savage Holiday

the long version

Erskine Fowler, an insurance executive forced by corporate intrigue into the long holiday of retirement, becomes enmeshed in a weekend of bizarre and bloody circumstances that reveal his troubled psyche and desperation. Naked and accidentally locked out of his apartment, he inadvertently causes a boy to fall to his death. Driven by guilt and by a compulsion to conceal his involvement, Fowler befriends the boy's mother. Yet his self-destructive rages to redeem himself lead to mayhem. This is Richard Wright's only published work with no black characters. He was unsure about how his readers would react to this bravely experimental novel. Shying away from the racial problem he depicted in his other works, he writes here a riveting study in psychological fiction. It deserves to be regarded anew as work from a master.