From Out of the City

Kelly's inventive, overwritten tale of double-dealing and moral vacancy unfurls amidst a backdrop of Machieavellian politics in a broken Dublin, 10 years after the Jerusalem War. The President of the United States, a drug-fueled libertine in love with his cockapoo, Elvis, has been shot dead at a dinner in his honor. On a dilapidated street in the town of D%C3%BAn Laoghaire, we meet a trifecta of pitiable characters whose lives are indirectly upheaved by the aftershock of the assassination. There's our pleonastic, senescent narrator, an isolated voyeur with a surveillance headquarters in his attic, his main target, Schroeder, a former wunderkind turned drunk academic obsessed with the busty TV news reporter Paula Viola; and Walton, a porn-addicted hermit strapped to a wheelchair. This oddball ensemble unfortunately lacks sufficiently developed motivations, which in turn plot the course of this uneven story. The narrator's jarring interventions do the novel a further disservice: "I appreciate that there are elements of the thriller now creeping into the narrative%E2%80%A6" he explains, "and indeed there will be more heightened scenes soon." Kelly proves himself as an imaginative storyteller with a keen eye for the absurdly depraved, but the overall result of the novel is scattershot. (Apr.)