A deliberate, dazzling look at enduring love

The Maytrees
By Annie Dillard
HarperCollins, 216 pp., $24.95

Annie Dillard is a writer of unusual range, generosity, and ambition. In the course of several decades she has published poetry; journalism; memoir; a book about writing fiction; narrative non fiction, including the beloved "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek"; and, in 1992 , a wonderful first novel, "The Living." "The Living" is a panoramic history of the Pacific Northwest in the second half of the 19th century . I have to confess that my vivid memories of this novel, with its many characters, its acute depiction of the intersection of public and private history, and its long-running plot lines, in no way prepared me for her second novel, "The Maytrees" -- also wonderful but in a very different way.

"The Maytrees" is set on the opposite coast, mostly in Provincetown, during the five decades after World War II. A much shorter book, with far fewer characters, it is largely uninterested in public history; in fact, Dillard disarmingly tells us on the second page that her main characters, Lou and Toby Maytree , "acted in only two small events -- three, if love counts." And the voice of the novel is at times sweepingly omniscient, leaping forward 20 years in one sentence, zigzagging back in another, as if seeing the characters from some Olympian perspective. Perhaps the greatest difference, however, is one of tone. Dillard is always a philosophical writer, interested in asking larger questions, making deeper connections, but in "The Maytrees" she allows herself to do so with unusual freedom for a fiction writer.

The word "philosophical" may not be universally understood as praise, so let me add at once that she also creates rich, opinionated characters and moments of real suspense; the reader is amply rewarded for the concentration it requires to enter Dillard's world. And rewarded not least by her prose , which throughout is bracingly intelligent, lovely, and humane. The many descriptions of the natural world are so precise and pristine that those who know Cape Cod will have the sense of seeing that familiar landscape anew, while those not previously acquainted with the landscape will be visiting it with the best possible guide. Page after page offers details so dazzling that, if I hadn't been absorbed in the book, I would have immediately set out for "that exposed and mineral sandspit" spiral ing into the ocean. It's hard to choose from Dillard's many images, but here are two examples from the early pages: "Each offshore surf line contained commotion but got nowhere, like someone's reading the same line over and over" and, one of my favo rites, "Deary . . . claimed to like the way starlight smelled on sand." "More peppery," she told a friend, than the smell of moonlight.

The number of major events in the lives of Lou and Toby Maytree may be small, but that does not prevent us from being deeply engaged in them. The novel opens when Toby, a poet who grew up in Provincetown, returns there after the war and glimpses a tall, wide-eyed woman whom he at first mistakes for Ingrid Bergman. Lou, an aspiring painter who has moved to Provincetown with her mother , is nervous around men but is gradually won over by Toby's meticulous courtesy as he shows her his shack in the dunes, and his book - length poem. They fall in love and can scarcely believe anyone else has had this experience. "Theirs was too much feeling to push through the crack that led down to the dim world of time and stuff."

The 59-page prologue describes their courtship, their marriage, and the birth of their only child, a son, Petie, for whom Lou experiences a rapturous new depth of emotion; Toby becomes more interested in him as he grows older. Happily the couple are united in valuing time more than money. Toby moves houses, either by haywagon or water, to earn a living, and writes his poems. Lou thinks about painting, and seldom talks. They seem happy in their threadbare existence, and in their friends . Periodically they ponder, singly or together, large questions: "Who enjoyed lovemaking more -- the man or the woman?" "Was romantic love a modern invention? How long could it last as requited, as unrequited? Does familiarity blur lovers' clear sight of essences and make surfaces look significant?"

These questions -- about the nature and longevity of romantic love -- lie at the heart of the novel, and propel the action of the three parts that follow the prologue. Dillard is expert at conveying the possible surprises of emotion -- the degree to which the self is always terra incognita -- and of how people change over time, or don't. Her evocation of her characters growing older is exquisite. "As they aged they grew more avid of beauty, the royal sea in their eyes in town, the dunes' scimitar shadows. . . . Bay tides amazed them again."

As most readers will surely guess, this is a novel in which marriage is not the end of the story. Lou and Toby fall prey to other romantic forces in a way that we recogni ze, from both life and novels, but what Dillard does with these forces is peculiarly original and surprising. "The Maytrees" is a love story of an unusually adult and contemporary kind.

Margot Livesey is a writer in residence at Emerson College. Her most recent novel is "Banishing Verona."