How Like a God

Rob Lewis's bustling, cozy home life in the Washington, D.C., area is suddenly ravaged by the growth within him of a mysterious power: he can now read and influence people's minds. Rob's power incidentally causes an injury and a death, and when it threatens to distort his children's lives, he bolts to New York City. There, he degenerates in mind and appearance, surviving by petty mind manipulations while living in fear of injuring the family he's left behind. After he catches himself at the point of using his newfound abilities to rape a teenage girl, Rob seeks the aid of an NIH scientist, Edwin Barbarossa, to contain his powers. Drawn by a psychic message to a desert in Central Asia, Rob, accompanied by Edwin, must battle the ancient, murderously narcissistic source of his power-and his own dark nature as well. Despite the fantastic plot, the sometimes poetic internal mindscales and the attempt to lay in mythological correspondences, the writing is pedestrian, preferring bare attribution, for example, to the telling gesture. Rob's rehabilitation and growth of character are winningly portrayed, but Clough's (The Impossumble Summer) treatment of the grand situation-a man gaining access to, and thus encompassing, all human minds-remains shallow and unconvincing. (Mar.)