Acting Alone

High-octane and elaborately ornate prose proves the highlight, and ultimately the downfall, of this idiosyncratic first novel from the first list of this new house. In the early days of the Reagan Administration, Kansas college professor Sam Edwine comes up with a great get-rich-quick scheme: he will ghostwrite the memoirs of Sgt. Spikey Wamsutter, former Iranian hostage and Nebraska cousin of the beautiful Shannon, a student for whom Sam lusts. When Sam's left-wing politics get him kicked out of the Wamsutter home, he goes where he usually goes for solace: the St. Paphnutius convent near Cheyenne Mountain, where Shannon's sister has become a nun and taken the name of Sister Polycarpana. The plot also includes the evil schemes of a Mormon Elder and the brutal violence of a group called the Hostages for Freedom, but it all gets lost beneath a landslide of exuberant but undisciplined prose that wallows in its insistent cleverness. (Sam, in the convent's library: """"Yes, take upon yourself Christ's own aura from beautiful examples of Logos-and also, just incidentally, take upon yourself an unaccustomed glow of self-esteem from the dark-eyed librarian nun. Note her inaccessibly seeing you from the doorway, apparently suffering a partial animus projection upon you, e'en for thine own name's sake""""). The effect is deadening and makes it nearly impossible to determine whether this novel is supposed to be satirical, or serious, or a well-intentioned but flawed mixture of both. (Oct.)