Burt intends to stay in Europe, find his lost son and settle old scores. In this regard, Wodicka's novel follows a fairly conventional structure and seems headed, even in its quirkily roundabout way, toward traditional forms of resolution. Certainly Burt will come to terms with Kitty's death. (He does so in a startlingly poignant scene that equates true love to the storming of a fortress, with Burt's commandeering a siege-tower prop to reach Kitty's bedroom.) And Burt will try to patch up his relationships with both children before the book is over.
But Wodicka succeeds in keeping this story bittersweet and unpredictable. He is not in the business of confecting happy endings; he is more drawn to Pyrrhic victories. The book's structural need to send Burt on a voyage of self-discovery does not require the light of undue sunshine. And Burt, as a man whose visit to a present-day Central European nightclub reminds him of Hieronymus Bosch and St Vitus' dance, is in no danger of succumbing to unwarranted optimism. The benediction of the title is as guardedly encouraging as this book gets.
All Shall Be Well works hard to flog the contrasts between medieval and modern life for comic purposes. Wodicka envisions the Burt of AD 1965, teaching school and trying unsuccessfully to hand out copies of the Magna Carta to his students, leading a dim workaday life that Kitty would soon brighten. He depicts the endless friction between Burt and his mother-in-law, Anna Bibko, a Lemko who is guided by her senses of traditionalism and grievance. He notes that Anna hates Burt so much that Burt has had to use the name Vaclav Havel to get her on the telephone.
Anna serves as a reminder that the words of this book's title are a hope, not a promise. Like Kitty's death, Burt's dread and his family's disintegration, Anna underscores Wodicka's suitably ancient theme: memento mori. In Burt's more artfully comic phrase, "she is a U-boat beneath us all."
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