CIRCUS OF THE GRAND DESIGN

A traveling circus with an otherworldly pedigree serves as a supportive surrogate family for a directionless young man in this diverting traipse through the terrain of magic realism. Lewis, an amiable slacker, is fleeing after accidentally burning down a Long Island beach rental when he bumps into Joseph Dillon, enigmatic ringmaster of the Circus of the Grand Design. Dillon hires him for public relations work, but warns that there's no coming back from a circus that "moves in the fourth dimension." The circus crew includes Garson Gold, a rakish juggler with a seemingly supernatural talent for keeping aloft any item tossed him, and Bodyssia, a capybara trainer with Amazonian appetites. While Lewis spends most of the novel ingratiating himself with these two, he's also tantalized by Cybele, an alluring sylph whose sexual attentions ease his integration into the insular circus society. Wexler (In Springdale Town ) mostly avoids the familiar "circus of life" terrain already mapped out by Angela Carter, Ray Bradbury and other fantasists, concentrating instead on Lewis's efforts to understand the temporal and spatial peculiarities of the train carrying the circus between towns and to find his place in its quasi-mythic design. Though the narrative sometimes moves as aimlessly as Lewis, its unaffected style and exuberantly eccentric cast keep the story as buoyant and airy as a center-ring trapeze act. (Aug.)