The Poser

Rubin’s debut novel is a witty, inventive character study about a man without a personality. Giovanni Bernini is eerily skilled at imitating those around him, able to select “which parts of a person to take and which to leave alone.” The teenager’s talent is also a compulsion, as at various times he is unable to resist mimicking his teacher, a mourner at a funeral, and even a lover in the throes of ecstasy. Giovanni is convinced to take his act to the stage by the immensely entertaining (and immense) Maximilian Horatio, a Falstaffian talent manager. Bernini soon achieves fame in a New York City club by imitating audience members, who are delighted to be instantly exposed, “as if [he] had introduced them to their own flesh.” The theater is run by the sinister Bernard Apache, who steers his star to Hollywood, and finally into politics, a logical trajectory for a cipher such as Giovanni. This dashed-off political episode at the end, in which Giovanni runs for office as an anti-communist demagogue, is the only real flaw in Rubin’s well-sculpted portrait of a man working through a beguiling problem: how to find his voice when he is most himself while aping others. (Mar.)