Lucker and Tiffany Peel Out

Compared in a back-cover blurb from Michael Bracewell to Douglas Coupland ``at his most accelerated,'' Mildmay, a hipster who grew up in Africa and has worked in modeling and film, has produced a first novel that is in parts predictable. The novel, whose chapters read like short stories, relates the American road trip of two British slackers: the smart, cynical narrator-protagonist, Tiffany, and her alcoholic, dysfunctional rock photographer boyfriend, Lucker, as they tour with the fictional band Relief. Predictable to the point of annoyance is Mildmay's satirical-and largely condescending-attitude toward America, which she portrays as the land of (surprise!) kitsch, rootlessness and peculiar verbal habits (her rendition of a New York Puerto Rican accent is utterly lacking in verisimilitude). She rounds up the usual racist Southerners, bitter Vietnam vets and dumb materialists with an ongoing ironic tilt that obscures any meaningful basis for its existence. More clever and less predictable are Mildmay's specific metaphorical comparisons that lift the generally downward momentum of the work. (Oct.)