Rattlesnake Farming

In this self-consciously bizarre gothic tale by the author of A Handbook for Visitors from Outer Space, characters from several generations evince as many peculiarities per capita as those in Katherine Dunn's Geek Love. Although they're not especially freakish physically, the principals here render sane humans powerless and pathetic through their coldblooded rationality, detached behavior and calculating capacity to do harm. There's Zoe, a woman who has been mute by choice for a decade; her former high school boyfriend Robert, who stimulated her condition by causing his own father's death; and Zoe's brother Nick, who lives in a house atop a teeming rattlesnake den and experiments on venom-based psychtropic drugs while his wife dishes up snake recipes. Scenes set in the present are interspersed with expository flashbacks that trace Zoe's lineage through several witchlike women. In light of Zoe's future, references to her childhood preoccupations with torture and suffering seem especially demented--we know it isn't just a phase--and also rather irksome, which is what her sanctimonious sign language rapidly becomes. Serpents both literal and figurative and allusions to original sin and crucifixion power this strangely transfixing, narcissistically warped novel. (Oct.)