cover image Long Pig

Long Pig

Jon Stephens Fink. Random House (UK), $19.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-224-04081-5

Take a trip with Alex Berry, the whiz-kid entrepreneur driven to become a major mogul in record time. In this exhaustively detailed tale, Berry turns from perfumed balls to an environmentally friendly sausage and fertilizer maker, the Humpty Dumpty Dumpster, for quick 'n' easy success. Venture capital arrives in the form of Rev. Jim Tickell, a man for whom religion and finance come tied in a neat knot. From there, Alex finds himself caught up in a web of politics, illicit romance, religion and, at times, wicked satire before the tale ends. Fink's prose is always colorful and intricately detailed, a trait that is fascinating as often as it is annoying. The author appears to have delusions of Pynchon, as in his unwanted description of the protagonist urinating in a sink: ""The bowl of the sink was a shallow slope and his last squirt and dribble lacked the oomph to avoid sprinkling the sides with yeasty gold drops."" And his narrative continues well beyond the actual story and long after the fates of both clergyman and would-be entrepreneur are sealed. Still, look out for Heidi Knauer, a hellacious hanger-on who wants her own piece of the pie. She might be worth a story all her own--which she spends much the book trying to convince the rest of this world's denizens. (Apr.)