BANISHING VERONA

Livesey's lovely fifth novel tells the story of Zeke, a 29-year-old London housepainter with "the face of a Raphael angel" and an autism-like difficulty relating to other people, and Verona, who shows up at a house Zeke is working on, very pregnant and claiming to be the owners' niece. After they spend a night together, Verona disappears, leaving a pair of painter's coveralls nailed to the floor. Neither can forget the other. As Zeke goes on a hunt for the mysterious Verona, she calls him—from Boston, where she has, in a slightly far-fetched turn of events, gone to hunt down her blithely amoral brother, Henry, to convince him to repay his creditors, who have begun threatening her. Zeke heeds her instructions to meet her there, only to spend days alone in a hotel room as she contacts him from New York and then from London, when, Henry's financial matters settled, she abruptly goes home. Devastated, he returns to London, ignores her calls (even burying his answering machine to fully banish her), but finally gives in to the powerful connection he felt the moment he met her. The off-kilter chronology of their alternating stories works well, and both Zeke and Verona have just enough quirks to be endearing without being implausible; the supporting characters are similarly well realized. As Livesey (Eva Moves the Furniture ) gently probes the depths of longing, betrayal and forgiveness, her gift for creating sublimely unexpected sentences is abundantly on display: Zeke's "emotions were swirling and scattering like leaves in a playground on a windy day; he glimpsed joy, rage, hope, amazement, jealousy, frustration and exaltation flashing by." "You're the opposite of Narcissus," an old girlfriend of Zeke's tells him. Moments like these are ghosts that dance in the reader's vision long after the photographer's flashbulb has popped. Agent, Amanda Urban. Author tour. (Nov. 3)