Morley, Christopher: Thunder on the Left, v.1, 20 Jan 2008.

[BenG]

A review from Fantasy and Science Fiction:

Thunder on the Left by Christopher Morley (1925)

TO CONCOCT a unique fantasy novel, mix a dash of Virginia Woolf's interior monologues, a jigger of Robert Nathan's whimsy, a soupçon of Noel Coward's witty sophistication, a handful of Kuttneresque children, and a pinch of Robert Aickman's eerie atmospherics. Stir all ingredients in the blender of Christopher Morley's talents, and the result is the airy yet grave comedy-cum-ghost-story Thunder on the Left, whose mysterious title derives from an apocryphal quote concerning oracles.

Morley's book is that very oracle, Delphically ambiguous. The first chapter focuses on a children's birthday party in honor of a boy named Martin, introducing us to his metaphysically troubled peers and their blithely cynical parents. Jump twenty-one years into the future, when several of those children-turned-adults are now regathered at the original summer-house scene for their own stale antics of adultery and ennui. ("It didn't seem quite square to be in love with a man and his wife simultaneously.") But also present are a child ghost named Bunny and the time-slipped child-in-a man's-body, Martin. Together, the two specters toss a spanner into the calcified adult patterns of behavior.
...
—Paul Di Filippo

http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/2003/cur0309.htm

The ancient Romans believed that when men heard thunder on the left the gods had something especially important to impart.