On the Way to the Venus de Milo

An adventurer with a taste for the Romantic poets amuses, baffles and infuriates a widow and her daughters in this ambitious if not entirely successful first novel set in New York and laced with a Southern gothic tinge. Estelle, a 60-ish Upper East Sider who has 12 dogs and more money than she knows what to do with, befriends a mysterious count. Ten years younger than his new benefactor, Count Francesco von Cockleburg has endless charm but little cash, which alarms Estelle's two daughters, one a society matron, the other a lost soul who has spent her adult life wandering the American South. When the extended family moves to Estelle's summer home upstate, nearly everyone, including the dogs, finds someone to quarrel with. This Midsummer Night's Dream of a novel has a disconnected feel as characters flit in and out of scenes in ways that are sometimes magical, sometimes merely confusing. A number of the figures-the blustering chauvinist, the nosy housekeeper, the quiet caretaker-seem more caricature than flesh and blood, though perhaps well-suited to this modern fairy tale, whose metaphoric portrait of a small boy whose parents can't agree on how to raise him is sad and incisive. And if the plot is scattered and the syntax at times too freewheeling, the underlying truths of loneliness and the search for love are drawn with heart. (Jan.)