Handy as I Wanna Be: A Novel with Tools!

Clever in theory but clunky in execution, this patently contrived tale of an ill-fated amateur Mr. Fix-It could use some repair work of its own. Unemployed (but apparently fiscally secure), Vinnie Agita is an obsessive-compulsive stay-at-home with an expensive ""handyman"" habit. Attempting to improve a pneumatic nail gun, he instead demolishes a neighbor's treasured legion of concrete garden gnomes. His wife, Angie, resorts to tough love in an attempt to cure Vinnie's handymania. Banned from the hardware store, banished from the bedroom and sworn not to even think of fixing anything but the disfigured gnomes now in his basement, Vinnie seeks the help of psychotherapist Nicholas J. Ruffalfalo. But when Vinnie cons the doctor into letting him repair a small water stain on his office ceiling, his addiction goes out of control. The hijinks accumulate: Vinnie loses his memory and is captured by Robert Bly-esque ""wild men of the woods,"" while his well-intentioned shrink takes refuge with the Superegomaniacs, a biker gang composed entirely of ""renegade analysts."" From power washers to belt sanders to the chemical arsenal of a termite exterminator, Rause's would-be burlesque seems designed to incorporate everything in the tool section of the Sears catalogue. Vinnie's first-person narration includes the nervously jokey guy-talk, and the gouts of mechanical detail, one expects of a real-life hardware boor. Straining for laughs, and obsessed with modern, middle-class, masculine foibles, these exploits include flashes of thigh-slapping brilliance, but most are no funnier than Hints from Heloise. (June)