Fiction: Publishers Weekly Fiction Reviews from 6/26/06

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 6/26/2006

The Light of Evening
Edna O'Brien. Houghton Mifflin, $25 (288p) ISBN 0-618-71867-2

In her 20th work of fiction, O'Brien meditates with haunting lyricism on the lure of home and the compulsion to leave. Dilly, 78 and widowed, lies in a Catholic hospital in rural Ireland waiting for her elder daughter, Eleanora, to arrive at her bedside. In gorgeous stream-of-consciousness from the masterful O'Brien (Lantern Slides), Dilly recalls her early years as well as decades of misunderstanding and conflict with Eleanora. Dilly's past unfolds in fits and starts: she leaves her mother behind in a small village in Ireland to seek a better life in 1920s Brooklyn, returning after a failed affair and the death of her brother, Michael. She promptly marries the rich Cornelius; they settle at Rusheen, his dilapidated family estate, and have two children. For Eleanora's story, O'Brien shifts to the third person: the daughter moves to England, marries an older novelist and begins a successful career as a writer before divorcing him and embarking on a series of affairs with married men, a life that Dilly both envies and scorns. The award-winning O'Brien evokes the cruelty of estrangement while allowing her characters to remain sympathetic and giving them real voice. (Oct.)

Vida's luminous, dramatic seventh novel finds Joseph Kimmel, a Missouri school teacher, heading to mid-19th-century Texas to claim his recently deceased brother's belongings; he's left for dead when his horse is stolen. Across the plains, after her Texas Ranger husband dies fighting Comanches, Aurelia Ruiz takes refuge at a Comanche camp and adopts their ways. Henry Castro, a Frenchman with dreams of creating an Alsatian-immigrant–populated town in his own name, not only rescues Kimmel but marries him off to Katrin, an unattached white émigré whom a Comanche leader had espied and wanted for his own. The newlyweds head off to create a distinctive ranch, one that welcomes members of the Tonkaway tribe, Mexicans, escaped slaves, free African-Americans and others in distress. Affairs of the heart are never neglected in Vida's novels (Goodbye, Saigon, etc.), and Kimmel soon finds himself enraptured when he meets the beautiful Aurelia, just as a posse of xenophobic ranchers wreak havoc on the ranch. This radiant work of historical fiction—vibrantly atmospheric and emotionally dense—spans 12 years in the lives of many engaging characters, who come to life on every page. (Oct.)

In Thomas's dense, freewheeling novel, Ariel Manto, an oversexed renegade academic, stumbles across a cursed text, which takes her into the Troposphere, a dimension where she can enter the consciousness, undetected, of other beings. Thomas first signals something is askew even in Ariel's everyday life when a university building collapses; soon after, Ariel discovers her intellectual holy grail at a used book shop: a rare book with the same title as the novel, written by an eccentric 19th-century writer interested in "experiments of the mind." The volume jump-starts her doctoral thesis, but her adviser disappears. And when Ariel follows a recipe in the book, she finds herself in deep trouble in the Troposphere. Her young ex-priest love interest may be too late to save her. Thomas blithely references popular physics, Aristotle, Derrida, Samuel Butler and video game shenanigans while yoking a Back to the Future–like conundrum to a gooey love story. The novel's academic banter runs the gamut from intellectually engaging to droning; this journey to the "edge of consciousness" is similarly playful but less accessible than its predecessor, PopCo. (Oct.)

When the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria seceded in 1967 to form the independent nation of Biafra, a bloody, crippling three-year civil war followed. That period in African history is captured with haunting intimacy in this artful page-turner from Nigerian novelist Adichie (Purple Hibiscus). Adichie tells her profoundly gripping story primarily through the eyes and lives of Ugwu, a 13-year-old peasant houseboy who survives conscription into the raggedy Biafran army, and twin sisters Olanna and Kainene, who are from a wealthy and well-connected family. Tumultuous politics power the plot, and several sections are harrowing, particularly passages depicting the savage butchering of Olanna and Kainene's relatives. But this dramatic, intelligent epic has its lush and sultry side as well: rebellious Olanna is the mistress of Odenigbo, a university professor brimming with anticolonial zeal; business-minded Kainene takes as her lover fair-haired, blue-eyed Richard, a British expatriate come to Nigeria to write a book about Igbo-Ukwu art—and whose relationship with Kainene nearly ruptures when he spends one drunken night with Olanna. This is a transcendent novel of many descriptive triumphs, most notably its depiction of the impact of war's brutalities on peasants and intellectuals alike. It's a searing history lesson in fictional form, intensely evocative and immensely absorbing. (Sept. 15)

When a terrorist group bombs a Manhattan museum, New York Examiner columnist Carter Ransom suffers an emotional breakdown and returns to his Mississippi hometown, Troy, to convalesce. Carter's father, Judge Ransom, has just retired after 40 years on the bench there; his most famous case was presiding over Troy's national disgrace: the Shiloh Church bombing, in which four civil rights activists died in 1965. At the time, Carter was a local rookie journalist who met and fell in love with Sarah Solomon, one of the volunteers who died. One man was convicted, but the instigator, Samuel Bohanon, the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, went free. Now, as Carter begins to understand that he has never fully come to terms with Sarah's death, an ambitious young state attorney is reopening the Shiloh Church bombing case—and she's going after Bohanon, along with anyone who stands in her way, including Carter's father, who, rumors say, threw the first trial to spare Sam. While this capacious second novel by Pulitzer Prize–winning Kudzu cartoonist Marlette (The Bridge) doesn't travel any new turf (and despite the over-the-top climax), the author writes of the South with such affection that the novel becomes one of those stories a reader doesn't mind revisiting. (Sept.)

Self-publishing street lit phenomenon Aaron (To Live and Die in Harlem) serves up a smoldering batch of raw erotica and criminality. Mason and Adena Fickle are a black suburban couple trying to put distance between themselves and their hardscrabble roots; Mason is an accountant with disciplined work habits and a bullheaded attitude about making a good living for himself and his wife, Adena, and to keep things "creative" at home, the two engage in increasingly kinky sex. But when Loween, the third member of their threesome, chokes to death on Mason's copious ejaculate, the Fickles find their aspirations in jeopardy after the shady, wheelchair-bound Sid, claiming to be Loween's cuckolded boyfriend, appears on their doorstep and reveals Loween wasn't who the Fickles thought she was. As much a story about the sexual taboos of middle-class America as a cautionary tale about the dangers of "going white," a taboo of upwardly mobile African Americans, Aaron's book mines Mason's and Adena's internal lives fairly well, though the plot has its share of ridiculous turns, and characters are more notable for their extreme natures than for their depth. It won't make many Mother's Day gift lists, but Aaron's latest is a full-throttle tour of a sordid world. (Sept.)

Former academic Setterfield pays tribute in her debut to Brontë and du Maurier heroines: a plain girl gets wrapped up in a dark, haunted ruin of a house, which guards family secrets that are not hers and that she must discover at her peril. Margaret Lea, a London bookseller's daughter, has written an obscure biography that suggests deep understanding of siblings. She is contacted by renowned aging author Vida Winter, who finally wishes to tell her own, long-hidden, life story. Margaret travels to Yorkshire, where she interviews the dying writer, walks the remains of her estate at Angelfield and tries to verify the old woman's tale of a governess, a ghost and more than one abandoned baby. With the aid of colorful Aurelius Love, Margaret puzzles out generations of Angelfield: destructive Uncle Charlie; his elusive sister, Isabelle; their unhappy parents; Isabelle's twin daughters, Adeline and Emmeline; and the children's caretakers. Contending with ghosts and with a (mostly) scary bunch of living people, Setterfield's sensible heroine is, like Jane Eyre, full of repressed feeling—and is unprepared for both heartache and romance. And like Jane, she's a real reader and makes a terrific narrator. That's where the comparisons end, but Setterfield, who lives in Yorkshire, offers graceful storytelling that has its own pleasures. (Sept.)

While the story of two broken couples—one by infidelity, one by tragedy—contains a number of maudlin moments, this polished novel's touchy-feely title belies the trenchant humor of its take on contemporary New York, especially its literary scene. Adam Weller—one of the more engaging scoundrels in recent fiction—is an aging, semirenowned novelist whose star is on the wane. Petty, egocentric and devious, he has left his wife, Eleanor, for a beautiful, ambitious younger woman, Thea. Through a series of improbable events, he acquires a late rival's long-lost, unpublished manuscript, a masterpiece which he appropriates and sells as his own, in hopes of reviving his flagging career. Eleanor, an Upper West Side therapist, struggles to recover from their breakup, even as an old college sweetheart tries to reconnect with her. Meanwhile, their daughter, Maud, a philosophy grad student with a history of depression, enters into an unlikely but intense affair with Samir, a man haunted by the death of his young daughter from a previous marriage. The interwoven plots proceed briskly toward what could be a spectacularly melodramatic climax, but despite occasional contrivances, Morton (Starting Out in the Evening) brings the novel to a quietly moving conclusion. (Sept.)

Campbell (Slave to Fashion; Slave to Love) blends strained fidelity, the perils of parenting and a heaping dose of bodily-function jokes with a scathing British wit in her third romp. Fashionista Celeste and her writer husband, Sean, have a reliable if staid life: "two and a bit"-year-old child Henry and enough money to live comfortably in one of the world's most expensive cities. But when Celeste reads Sean's journal and learns that he's becoming friendly with "yummy mummy" Uma Thursday from Henry's playgroup, the cradle gets rocked. In chapters that alternate between Sean's journal entries and Celeste's quest for revenge, Uma turns up the heat on Sean and Celeste has her seven-year-itch scratched. Campbell's insights into the tedium of settled relationships are spot-on: "Is this the way a marriage ends, like the bathwater going slowly cold? Or does something dramatic have to happen, a big bang, some shock and awe, a 9/11?" Its stylish prose and gravity of plot make this weightier than a beach read, though the characters' psychology has its phoned-in moments. By using characters from her previous novels and leaving several loose ends untied, Campbell has crafted a steamy springboard to what could be a fiery sequel. (On sale Sept. 26)

With this fictional octogenarian's rich reflection on her disappointing life, Christy Award–winner Turner pens her best novel in years. Bitterness over her late husband and his secret addiction to pornography has colored Sophia Hess's view of everything she's trusted and held dear. Dangling the promise of leaving her money to whichever distant relative cares for her, "Aunt Sophie" takes up residence in the spare room belonging to her loquacious, pontificating nephew, Patrick, and his diffident wife, Rachel, in Greenville, Miss. They collect a ragtag group of acquaintances, including an ex-con and a severely disabled four-year-old who flit in and out of the story. Sophie, a former English teacher, passes her days mostly by reading obituaries, watching television and learning about the birds outside her window. Turner brilliantly weaves together the threads of Shakespeare's plays, sitcoms, birds and their habits, and the deaths of celebrities gleaned from Time magazine's obituary section as she unfolds the story. As she did in Some Wildflower in My Heart, Turner shows how even the most awkward and imperfect love, care and attention can yield meaningful results. Readers may find the present tense narration mechanical at times, and the story begins slowly, but this helps form an impression of the protagonist and her dull marking of days. Genuine humor and well-crafted characters make this a memorable and inspiring novel. (Sept.)

The pseudonymous Italian author of Days of Abandonment returns with a daughter's attempt to unlock the mystery of her mother's death by drowning following years of domestic abuse. Days before her body washed ashore near her hometown of Naples, Amalia called her oldest daughter, Delia, now 45, with shocking news that she was with a man—not her estranged husband, a two-bit painter—then hung up, laughing. After the funeral (Amalia's husband doesn't show), Delia goes in search of the story behind the expensive new brassiere Amalia was found wearing at her death, incongruous for a poor seamstress who deliberately downplayed her good looks to avoid arousing her husband's savage jealousy. Caserta, a man who acted as Delia's father's agent as well as rival for Amalia's attention, plays a role here—and in Delia's past. In tactile, beautifully restrained prose, Ferrante makes the domestic violence that tore the household apart evident, including the child Delia's attempts to guard her mother from the beatings of her father. By the time of the denouement, Ferrante has forcefully delineated how the complicity in violence against women perpetuates a brutal cycle of repetition and silence. (Sept.)

Australian novelist Johnson evokes a tormented portrait of the fictional writer Katherine Elgin from her journal entries, excerpts of her unfinished autobiographical novel and assorted letters. This fragmented novel spans the decades from Katherine's childhood in the 1920s to her death in 1969, following the protagonist from her native Australia to the U.K. in the 1950s, Greece in the early '60s and back to Sydney by the end of that decade. Katherine marries author David Murray, with whom she has two daughters, Anna and Elizabeth. She is torn between her writing career and her role as wife and mother. "I am the bloody Pied Piper to my children, who are instructed by their instincts to follow me everywhere," she laments. Her once ardent marriage sours over time, and the novel, which starts at the end of her life, begins with David's harsh criticism of her overwrought autobiographical novel, excerpts of which are less compelling than her journal entries. In this sentimental yet provocative work, Johnson (Flying Lessons) wrestles with the well-worn conflict between a woman's obligation to her family and the creative impulse that drives her. (Sept.)

Bridget Fitzmaurice, the narrator of Quindlen's engrossing fifth novel, works for a women's shelter in the Bronx; her older sister, Meghan, cohost of the popular morning show Rise and Shine, is the most famous woman on television. Bridget acts as a second mother to the busy Meghan's college student son, Leo; Meghan barely tolerates Bridget's significant other, a gritty veteran police detective named Irving Lefkowitz. After 9/11 (which happens off-camera) and the subsequent walking out of Meghan's beleaguered husband, Evan, Meghan calls a major politician a "fucking asshole" before her microphone gets turned off for a commercial, and Megan and Bridget's lives change forever. As Bridget struggles to mend familial fences and deal with reconfigurations in their lives wrought by Meghan's single phrase, Quindlen has her lob plenty of pungent observations about both life in class-stratified New York City and about family dynamics. The situation is ripe with comic potential, which Bridget deadpans her way through, and Quindlen goes along with Bridget's cool reserve and judgmentalism. The plot is very imbalanced: a couple of events early, then virtually nothing until a series of major revelations in the last 50 or so pages. The prose is top-notch; readers may be more interested in Quindlen's insights than in the lives of her two main characters. (Aug. 28)

Themes of isolation and imprisonment dominate Hatziyannidis's enjoyable and peculiar debut novel. Set in a remote village on one of the Greek islands, the novel centers on Rodakis, a 25-year-old "essentially unemployed" and "irascible" loner who takes in Vaya, a woman on the run who carries a suspicious amount of luggage with her, at the urging of the village priest. Vaya and Rodakis slowly learn to trust one another, and Rodakis learns that Vaya has been hiding her infant daughter, Rosa, in one of her trunks. The three form an odd family, although, refreshingly, Rodakis and Vaya do not immediately develop a romantic relationship. While the early chapters are weakened by the stilted translation and a series of confusing flashbacks and flash forwards, Hatziyannidis's narrative hits its stride once Vaya encourages Rodakis to take up his dead father's bee-keeping business. Their recipe for honey draws unwanted attention from across the island and abroad, shattering their cloistered lives; everyone, it seems, wants the recipe, though none as badly as a group of monks who kidnap Rodakis and imprison him in a cave for years. It's a credit to Hatziyannidis that he pulls off a plausibly happy ending. (Sept. 18)

The death of innocence lends a bittersweet tone to Simon's third crime novel (after 2005's Body Scissors) to feature Dan Reles, a world-weary, middle-aged Austin, Tex., homicide detective who sees himself as a "six-foot, New York-born, ex-boxer Jew with a Mafia grunt father" and a loser with women. In April 1995, Reles has been on the force for almost 20 years and wants to be promoted. When he's called to the suspicious "suicide" scene of a former TV child star, 18-year-old Faith Copeland, he knows solving this high-profile crime might get him the recognition he needs. Meanwhile, homicide sergeant Catarina "Cate" Mora searches for Rolando "Rolo" Ortiz, a cute 13-year-old runaway whose mother has been wrongfully imprisoned. Both cops are horrified when Rolo's body turns up in the Texas lieutenant governor's bed, but making the connection between the two tragedies yields even more disturbing, if far-fetched, revelations about an extreme religious sect and political corruption. (Aug.)

The standard religious-thriller architecture is evident in McGowan's much-heralded debut, which coincidentally shares similarities with The Da Vinci Code (e.g., murders, Vatican interference, nefarious secret societies), but mostly the characters sit and talk about biblical history and the search for Magdalene-connected treasure. Biblical dreams and visions plague American Maureen Paschal, author of the bestselling HERstory—a Defense of History's Most Hated Heroines. When she travels to France's mysterious Languedoc region at the urging of Magdalene scholar Lord Berenger Sinclair, Maureen finds what has eluded centuries of treasure hunters—the original Magdalene scrolls that detail her love affair with Jesus, their marriage and the crucifixion. Though the author makes no effort to render these gospel excerpts in period prose, they're the most compelling part of a novel otherwise freighted with romance-fiction stylings and unadorned facts numbingly narrated. Originally self-published, this first of a trilogy has already sold foreign rights in 22 countries. 350,000 printing; 15-city author tour. (Aug.)

Set in 1945 near the end of WWII, Robbins's daring thriller opens with a brutal, brilliantly described double murder on the beach near Newburyport, Mass. From that scene to the end of the novel, the author's sure-handed control of his material never lets up, aided by his clear focus on the killer, a woman named "Judith," and the man assigned to solve the murders, professor Mikhal Lammeck, an expert in the methods of assassins. As Lammeck's investigations take him up and down the East Coast and, increasingly, to Washington, D.C., he comes to realize that someone may be trying to assassinate President Roosevelt. Robbins (War of the Rats) has an uncanny ability to provide just the right amount of historical detail without overwhelming the plot. This talent, coupled with superior characterization and a masterful, direct writing style will provide thriller lovers with one of their best reads of the year. The powerful climax deserves the term "heart-stopping." (Aug.)

Bestseller Kellerman's hardcore fans will welcome this eclectic volume, whose 17 selections include two new tales about her series husband-and-wife team, LAPD Lt. Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus; two stories with family themes, one coauthored with Kellerman's two daughters ("The Luck of the Draw"); and a pair of autobiographical essays, one a poignant tribute to her late father ("The Summer of My Womanhood"). Kellerman's short stories may lack the intricate plotting of her novels (Stone Kiss, etc.), but a typical effort like the title story, in which Decker notices some things out of place when a friend dies of an apparent heart attack, is never less than entertaining. Brief comments at the start of each entry provide context. (Aug.)

Thriller fans with a high tolerance for improbability will best appreciate Tanenbaum's latest Butch Karp novel, which picks up where Fury (2005) left off. The Manhattan DA has foiled psychopath Andrew Kane's bid to become the mayor of New York City; Kane, the former head of a law firm, awaits trial for murder at the Tombs. When Kane's attorneys seek their own psychiatric evaluation, they arrange for the high-risk prisoner to be examined at a private hospital upstate. Few readers will be surprised when the convoy is waylaid, allowing the criminal mastermind to escape and plot a bigger crime. Having allied himself with al-Qaeda, Kane seeks to bring about a cataclysmic act of terror while getting revenge on Karp and his allies. Unconvincing character reactions don't help the over-the-top plot, though the cliffhanger ending is sure to shock longtime followers of the series. (Sept.)

Like The Big Over Easy (2005), Fforde's first Nursery Crime novel, this sequel offers literary allusions, confusions and gentle satire, though, again like its predecessor, it lacks the snap of the author's Thursday Next series (The Eyre Affair, etc.). Jack Spratt, DCI of the Nursery Crime Division of the Reading Police Department, is also a PDR (Person of Dubious Reality), as are most of the characters Jack deals with, including the Gingerbreadman, a notorious killer, and Punch and Judy, a violence prone couple who are also marriage counselors. An alien policeman named Ashley, talking bears, a devoted group of cucumber-growing enthusiasts and an immensely powerful company, Quang Tech, add spice. All are grist for Fforde, whose word play runs the gamut from puns to shaggy dog stories. The Gingerbreadman's on the loose, Goldilocks is missing and Jack's once again persona non grata at headquarters. As Jack and his associates "bring justice to the nursery world," they also cast a Swiftian eye on corporate hubris, race relations, the drug trade and myriad other targets. (Aug.)

At the start of British author Joss's somber fifth novel of psychological suspense, opera singer Lila du Cann (née Eliza Duncan) returns to her childhood home on the Scottish coast to bury her estranged father. As she starts clearing out the family house, a chance visit to the attic awakens memories of the summer she was 15. Flashback to 1960. Lila's charming uncle George, a music teacher, arrives from London and her warring parents agree willy-nilly to finance an amateur staging of Puccini's opera Turandot. Uncle George, the producer, hires an attractive tenor, Joe Foscari, for the male lead of Calaf. Soon Lila is smitten, but does Joe have designs on the adolescent girl or do his affections lie elsewhere? Despite a cast of expertly drawn characters, each unhappy in his or her own way, the plot is slow to develop. Still, Joss, whose Half Broken Things (2005) won the CWA Silver Dagger Award, shows real promise that she may one day join the ranks of Ruth Rendell and P.D. James. (Aug.)

An Oslo academic who came of age in the way-out '60s shrinks back from the glaring modern age in Norwegian novelist and playwright Solstad's remarkably nuanced novel, his first to be translated into English. Elias Rukla, described in this stiff translation as "a rather sottish senior master in his fifties with a wife who had spread out a bit too much," is fed up after 25 years of teaching Ibsen's Wild Duck to increasingly apathetic 19-year-olds at Oslo's Fagerborg Secondary School. A breakdown following an incident with an umbrella and verbally abusing a student makes Elias recognize he has become obsolete. Accompanied by rueful thoughts of his aging but once beautiful wife, Eva Linde, the drama of Elias's life unfolds, from the memory of his friendship with Eva's first husband, the intellectual dynamo and Marxist Johan Corneliussen. Inseparable mates at university, the men engaged in vigorous discussions about philosophy and literature that stretched over days and numerous parties. But Johan inexplicably left for New York to join the capitalist quagmire he always railed against, abandoning Eva and their young child, a betrayal from which Elias never recovers. With sublime restraint and subtle modulation, Solstad conveys an entire age of sorrow and loss. (Aug.)

British author Booth's fifth crime novel (after Blind to the Bones) is as dark and winding as the labyrinth of caves below its Derbyshire setting. In 1990, Det. Constable Ben Cooper's father arrests Mansell Quinn for the brutal murder of his lover. Thirteen years later, Quinn disappears upon his release from prison, his ex-wife is immediately slain, and another murder soon follows. Convinced they're facing a revenge spree, the police mount a manhunt, probing physical clues and the messy web of relationships that Quinn has not quite left behind. The deeper Cooper and his colleagues probe, the more convinced Cooper becomes that Quinn was innocent of the original crime, a belief that deepens his sense that as the son of the arresting officer, he's personally at risk. Though the pace and focus falter slightly toward the end, this is intelligent, suspenseful reading that should continue to build Booth's U.S. audience. A master of psychological suspense, Booth hauntingly evokes the ambiguities of place and the enduring complexity of human relationships. (Aug.)

Set in Japan in the 1890s, this first novel from Bacarr (The Japanese Art of Sex) reflects the author's affection for Japanese culture, even as she plays to the Western misconception of the geisha as prostitute. As a gaijin (foreigner) in Kyoto, Kathlene Mallory—a 15-year-old green-eyed blonde—implausibly dreams of becoming a sexy geisha. When Kathlene's imperiled father must leave Japan, he persuades his mistress, the owner of the Teahouse of the Look-Back Tree, to take Kathlene on as a maiko (apprentice geisha). Three years later, the nasty Baron Tonda wants to buy Kathlene's virginity before he kills her. After Kathlene falls in love with Reed Cantrell, a handsome young American, the thought of surrendering to the baron becomes even more odious. But if Kathlene doesn't comply, the baron will destroy the reputation—and livelihood—of the teahouse and all its inhabitants. Erotic romance fans should be prepared for lots of teasing and terms like "Buddha-seed," "pleasure bean" and "deepest core of your moon grotto." (Aug.)

Love—or as one of the characters in Johnson's latest soap opera calls it, "plain, stupid, make-you-disrespect-the-hell-out-of-yourself love"—makes people do silly things. But even that fails to explain the absurd lengths to which three African-American Chicagoans go in Johnson's disappointing seventh novel (after The Million Dollar Divorce). Magazine editor Carla is neglecting her meek husband, Pete, by meeting Pete's best friend and business partner (and her ex-fiancé), Wayne, on the sly. Nothing steamy happens (she just wants to see if she still "has feelings" for Wayne). When Pete cheats—and confesses his transgression—Carla wants to even the score by stepping out (for real). Pete agrees, but only if he can pick the man. Pete chooses, of course, Wayne. Carla, afraid of falling deeper in love with Wayne, decides she and Wayne will only pretend to do the deed. But once Wayne and Carla are in the hotel room, things heat up. Pete, unable to contain his jealousy, has Wayne arrested for adultery and soon discovers that Carla's pregnant (and, no, she doesn't know by whom), a revelation that sends Pete on a violent tear. A hokey denouement rounds out this flaccid offering. (Aug.)

Poetry

Proving there are still plenty of poetic miles left in rhythm and rhyme, as well as in Larkinesque cynicism, this career-spanning collection offers an introduction to the work of a leading British poet and former professor of poetry at Oxford. Love and menace are the principal muses for Fenton's dark wit. Whether describing how an ex is safe because she's no longer loved ("What belongs to the wind and rain/ Is out of danger from the storm") or narrating war's awful arithmetic ("One man shall wake from terror to his bed/ Five men shall be dead"), the control behind these lines is often terrifying. Many of the most powerful poems memorialize the lingering effects of war. Fenton has a knack for capturing awful thoughts and moments, which one wants to forget but can't:"...he forgot to say to me/ How an honest man should die." There's also a punch to the love poems; in one singsong piece, a husband commands his wife to be happy, or he'll leave. Also included is the libretto for The Love Bomb, in which a woman leaves her lover for a cult, then tries to recruit him. It's hard to argue with formal, deeply biting lyricism done so well. (Oct.)

Despite his spare output and lack of formal education, Ali has become one of the most widely admired Palestinian poets. Composed in a synthetic Arabic that draws both on classical language and colloquial speech, Ali's vivid free verse conveys the moody resilience of his personality in treatments of the national grief of occupation, exile and the Palestinian Arabs' "endless migration." Often informed by symbols and structures from Arab tradition, Ali's ironies stand alongside easily grasped, even universal, versions of lament: "We did not know/ at the moment of parting/ that it was a moment of parting." Expanding an earlier rendition of Ali's works, the multinational translating team clearly transmits Ali's humor, his way with a tale and his deep roots in "fatigue, hunger, vagrancy,/ debts and addiction to ruin." Composed between the early 1970s and now, Ali's poems are timely and affecting; his 1984 masterpiece, "The Falcon," portrays the poet as a migratory bird indebted less to his companions than to his own "sadness... so much greater than I am." A moving, richly poetic story, in which all the deprivations of Ali's verse coalesce in a child's desire for a pair of shoes, closes the collection. (Oct.)

Over the last quarter-century, Notley has crafted an increasingly important body of work that mixes unabashed lyric beauty with jerky snippets from a capacious mind. Her books, however, have been haphazardly and often obscurely published by both small and major house; this collection brings together, for the first time, poems from all points in Notley's career, making available many pieces that have long been impossible to find. Beginning as a poet of the second generation of the New York School, Notley (who was married to the late Ted Berrigan, and, with their two sons, recently edited his Collected Poems) developed a mostly autobiographical, stream-of-consciousness style. Her meditations and sequences take an array of forms and modes, including collages of her children's voices ("These are my silver mittens Mommy"), short lyrics recalling famous figures ("The late Gracie Allen was a very lucid comedienne"), as well as absurdist poetic diaries and letters ("P.S. My own temperature is a perpetual 101 degrees"). More recent poems that come to terms with her marriage to Berrigan are among her best: " 'You haven't wanted to talk to me since I died,' he says." While somewhat idiosyncratically organized, this is an essential book. (Sept.)

In this edgy, energetic, even frenetic debut from a rising star of the Midwest, Lemon's jagged, commanding voice both charms and shocks: "Voice, be amazing/ circling the river bottom," his leadoff poem instructs. The first section (of four) stuns with accessible yet intense language, and also with the events it appears to describe: brain surgery and the poet's slow recovery from it. "Tomorrow my head opens," he says; "If I am still/ here, someone let me know what I am." Subsequent poems steer clear of medical topics in favor of sparkling, slightly diffuse cascades of images: "It is the year of the dismembered horse/ Bury me with bones instead of eyes." Crackling extremes court melodrama knowingly, challenging readers to say when enough is enough. Lemon's rawness and intelligence have a fine, in-your-face excess. Physical violence—"chipped-teeth," "kicked-heart,/ dried blood"—recurs as experience and symbol, as do a series of crime novel and film noir backdrops: "always, I'm decapitated," Lemon claims, "& feel as though someone is tracing/ The zippers of my self-inflicted bites." Above all, these poems make strong impressions, using their verbal surprises as confrontational flirtations, or else tiny explosives. (Sept.)

Smith appears to be that rarest of creatures, a charismatic slam and performance poet whose artistry truly survives on the printed page. Present at the creation of the slam in early-'80s Chicago and included in seminal films and anthologies, Smith (Big Towns, Big Talk, 1992) receded from the scene in recent years after her career as a newspaper journalist ended in scandal. This National Poetry Series–winning volume marks a triumphal return, showing an energetic writer with four urgent subjects. She depicts endangered children. She celebrates sex and sexuality, from the public display of celebrities to the power of the female orgasm: "Don't hate me because I'm multiple." She considers the heritage of black American art, in musical performance and in writing. Finally, she describes the experience of performance itself, with all its pride and embarrassment: "Angry, jubilant, weeping poets... we are all/ saviors, reluctant hosannas in the limelight." Several poems also animate the troubled lives of famous blues singers; elsewhere, a mother considers how her incarcerated son became a "jailhouse scribe." A superb variety of lines and forms—short and long, hesitant and rapid-fire—gives the book additional depth. Smith even offers fine advice: "Breathe/ like your living depends on it." (Sept.)

The salient fact to know on cracking Berrigan's third full-length collection is that he is artistic director of the Poetry Project of St. Mark's Church in New York City, the legendary center where his father, Ted Berrigan, and mother, Alice Notley, were active over two decades beginning in the 1960s. Like his previous collections Integrity & Dramatic Life (1999) and Zero Star Hotel (2002), this book draws on the present tension inherent within that public-private history, but moves resolutely outward into "my liberty's consistent dread." The 30-some-odd poems work in a high velocity idiom that is part New York School talking-from-the-hip, part kitchen-sink-ADD and part "gravitas to besmirch turn a/ chiseled phrase into unstable air in which I delight acuity 'do I want anyone to understand my dream? No. Never.' " Yet almost every poem contains trenchant responses to the current state of war, from "a big fucking crater downtown/ & I am inhaling corpse dust/ at 3:22 pm on West Broadway" to "blood-rich anti-war diction/ looking forward to serving." Continuing to develop his distinct poetic, Berrigan stitches these notes into intense missives to our "psychotic rates of exchange," drawing light and beauty from "our sheathed collateral wreckage." (July)

In this hefty collection, renowned octogenarian novelist and poet Roubaud sets about capturing the city of Paris through a catalogue and discussion of its history, literature, landmarks and streets. Roubaud is a member of the Oulipo group of experimental writers, whose members have included Raymond Queneau and Italo Calvino. The best of these poems breathe new life into this storied city. Roubaud's memorable description of the Eiffel Tower revivifies the clichéd landmark: "A dense crowd amble in the area your four legs straddle/ and gawk up at your nether parts... children are not banned and will go back directly to our countryside and dream, perverted ever after." Notable, too, are the "Six Little Logical Pieces": "—But I'd like/ to think truth/ here and now/ not think of anything/ in this floating world/ this fallible world/ this rotten plank of a world." At times, this detailing of the minutiae of Paris falls flat, as in the poem "License Portrait of Paris 1992," quite literally a list of Paris license plates—though preserving the city in this manner is perhaps part of the point. A thoughtful appendix of notes clarifies references and connections to French literature throughout. (July 18)

Widening our view of contemporary world poetry, this anthology presents—in fluid translations by, among others, Rika Lesser and Anselm Hollo—17 poets born after 1962 from Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Sweden and Norway. While their names may sound unfamiliar to most Americans, the formal, linguistic and tonal variety won't. In wrestling with the usual modern and postmodern problems of politics, individual and collective consciousness, anomie and violence, irony, humor and surprise provide one approach: a deliveryman enters a room, asking, "did you order a revolution?" Elsewhere, a poem called "Autobiography" notes, "We are all/ ground beef." These poems also fuse physical and imaginary worlds: "I knew a man who searched for the city in his body," begins a prose poem. Rebellious and subversive, other poems announce the poets' arrival ("I am here"), but also their complicated ambivalence ("I am my own opposition"); sometimes they insult and threaten ("Piss off, you jerk or I'll cut off your legs"). Whether praying for a couple's bliss or noting that not even the sun is immortal, the best of these reveal a contemporary Nordic beauty: "The keynote is wonder... Here come the warm currents." (July)

This gorgeous book of politically charged urban rebuses was written in Paris in 1950 by Pomerand, the associate of Isidore Isou, who lead the artistic Lettrist movement into the French headlines with its postwar provocations. Known to readers in the U.S., if at all, only through Greil Marcus's descriptions of the French edition in Lipstick Traces, the book appears here for the first time in this lovingly produced bilingual edition. It consists of toughly enigmatic texts—"This bullet-holed beauty's spoiling in the sun, godless, with a church full of atheists, alongside police headquarters in the sixth district"—matched by graphic pen-and-ink interpretations of them on facing pages, drawing on everything from mathematical symbols and Hebrew script to dice, guitars and mice. The texts can't really stand on their own, but they weren't meant to: buoyed by the obsessive yet whimsical energy of the drawings, they bring a paranoid, over-inscribed Paris to life, one what would soon explode, as Marcus has noted, into Situationism, Godard and May 1968. Reading this book rekindles the radical mid-century: exciting, unintelligible and essential. (July)

Mystery

In Indridason's excellent second mystery (after 2005's Jar City), a skeleton, buried for more than 50 years, is uncovered at a building site on the outskirts of Reykjavík. Who is it? How did he or she die? And was it murder? The police wonder, chief among them the tortured, introspective Inspector Erlendur, introduced in Jar City. While an archeologist excavates the burial site, several other narratives unfold: a horrifying story of domestic abuse set during WWII, a search for missing persons that unearths almost-forgotten family secrets involving some of the city's most prominent citizens, and Erlendur's own painful family story (his estranged, drug-addicted daughter is in a coma, after miscarrying her child). All these strands are compelling, but it's the story of the physical and psychological battering of a young mother of three by her husband that resonates most. And the denouement of this astonishingly vivid and subtle novel is unexpected and immensely satisfying. Indridason has won the CWA Golden Dagger Award. Author tour. (Oct.)

Two-time Edgar winner Klavan again puts his own quirky spin on classic noir in his slam-bang third contemporary crime thriller to feature PIs Scott Weiss and Jim Bishop (after 2004's Shotgun Alley). Paunchy, moralistic Weiss, head of the Weiss Detective Agency in San Francisco, is still searching for bewitching prostitute Julie Wyant (aka Julie Angel), who's threatened by a relentless murderer the press has dubbed "the Shadowman." Weiss's nihilistic operative, Bishop, ignores all caution to help his boss. The terse, third-person narration occasionally switches to first person as Klavan, who claims to have worked for Weiss, inserts himself in the story, which he describes as a fictionalized memoir. While this authorial intrusion may interrupt the main action, it leads to some hilarious consequences. After drawing the reader in with a gripping plot and engrossing characters, Klavan produces a jolt at the end when he slyly reveals that... it's all fiction! 3-city author tour. (Sept.)

Kernick (The Crime Trade) blurs the line between the right and wrong sides of justice in his fourth novel, a tense tale about a British cop turned vigilante-for-hire. Det. Sgt. Dennis Milne fled London for the Philippines after murdering innocent men he mistook for scumbags. Three years later, after changing his name to Mick Kane, he earns a living in Sabang Bay offing bad guys for pay; his latest target is a familiar London snitch who's wanted back in England for killing Milne's friend, Det. Asif Malik. Hungry for further vengeance, Milne risks his freedom and returns to London to track down others connected to Malik's murder. Milne re-examines the case Malik was investigating, sets up a meeting with a crime boss and gets ambushed for his troubles. From then on, Milne barely stays a step ahead of death. Though uneven at times, this action-packed page-turner will earn Kernick new followers. (Sept.)

A promising premise—placing a callow Boston police officer in the midst of WWII intrigue—isn't fully realized in this first of a new historical series from Benn (Desperate Ground). Soon after Pearl Harbor, Billy Boyle escapes a combat tour because his Southie family pulls strings to place him on the staff of a distant relative by marriage, a general named Dwight Eisenhower, whom Billy calls "Uncle Ike." Billy's untried detective skills are soon put to the test in London, where he's assigned to unmask a spy who may compromise Allied plans to drive the Nazis out of Norway. When one of the chief suspects turns up dead, an apparent suicide, Billy displays a knack for forensics as he uncovers medical anomalies that suggest homicide. Hopefully, Uncle Ike will have more to do in future installments—and Benn will introduce the sort of character complexity that distinguishes, say, Charles Todd's WWI-era psychological whodunits (A Long Shadow, etc.) or PBS TV's Foyle's War, which also involves murder investigations during WWII. (Sept.)

Corrigan's fifth Jack Austin mystery (after 2005's Bad Lie) combines an insider's view of the PGA Tour with a thankfully fictional story of violent crime. Austin has been on the tour for 13 years—long enough for a tournament win and to see the game transformed by improved equipment and the emergence of younger, stronger players. But it's rumored that players are making gains not just through hard work but with performance-enhancing drugs. Jack's best friend, Darcy Perkins, a PGA security consultant who's recuperating in a wheelchair after taking a bullet, calls on Jack for help with legwork as suspected cheaters start to die, landing Jack in the midst of a dangerous controversy. The detailed descriptions of golf shots, equipment and training—plus the pressures of cutthroat competition, lucrative purses and contracts—will satisfy golfers looking for an entertaining mystery. (Sept.)

Tough guy Stoney, his business partner, "Fat Tommy" Rosselli, and their young associate, Tuco, are back in this fine follow-up to Green's hard-boiled debut, Shooting Dr. Jack (2002). Stoney's been living in an apartment in New York City's East Village since his wife, Donna, kicked him out of the house, and his AA meetings provide structure but no comfort when he's missing his family. A rare rendezvous with his 17-year-old daughter, Marisa, puts him on the trail of a creepy Mr. Prior, whom Marisa describes as her mother's suitor. But when Stoney starts nosing around, he finds that Prior is actually stalking Marisa, who has been secretly working at a strip club. As Stoney probes Prior's shady affairs and apparently blank past, the dead bodies start piling up. Stoney sets up a wonderfully convoluted sting to take down the canny criminal who threatens his daughter. Green's well-drawn characters and nimble plot lift this above the common run of mysteries. (Aug.)

Juliet Applebaum, a PI and mother of three. continues her balancing act in Waldman's smart seventh Mommy-Track mystery (after 2005's The Cradle Robbers). When Heavenly, an African-American transvestite, shows up in tears at the office Juliet shares with her partner, ex-cop Al Hockey, the sassy, bighearted former public defender commits to tracking down the murderer of Heavenly's sister, Violetta, a drug addict and prostitute whose death has been ignored by the LAPD. The case takes Juliet from the privileged comfort of her home in the Hollywood Hills to the projects of South Central, where she interviews Violetta's family and streetwalker colleagues, all of whom are depicted with compassion. Juliet works methodically through her list of suspects—"Tricks, Boyfriends, Coworkers, Family"—until arriving at the sad answer to Violetta's demise. Whether scrambling for child care or bribing pimps, Juliet is resourceful, and her humor shines through in this brisk, thoroughly readable tale. (Aug.)

Murder visits Seattle's Hillside Manor B&B yet again in the busy 22nd entry in Daheim's popular cozy series (after 2005's Dead Man Docking). Judith McMonigle Flynn and her neighbors are exasperated with the noise violinist Rudi Wittener makes at all hours, but Judith thaws slightly when Rudi wants her to host a party for his visiting mentor, Dolph Kluger. When Kluger's poisoned to death while a guest at Hillside, suspects include Rudi; Rudi's son, Fritz; Rudi's ex-wife, Elsa; and a man claiming to be Kluger's illegitimate son. As if murder weren't enough, cousin Renie's credit cards disappear, as does Rudi's violin bow, valued at $350,000. With a plot crowded with characters new and old, numerous questions of paternity and frequent humorous references to the homicide rate at Hillside Manor, this will no doubt please longtime fans, but new readers may be more irritated than amused. (Aug.)

SF/Fantasy/Horror

Grimwood stumbles in this ambitious SF stand-alone, which falls short of the high mark set by his Arabesk trilogy (Pashazade, etc.), hard-boiled mysteries set in a near-future where the Ottoman Empire still exists. Grimwood alternates between the present-day efforts of an assassin to kill the U.S. president and a more cryptic future story line set aboard a Chinese spaceship. While the two plots eventually converge in a way most time-travel fans will have anticipated, the whole proves to be less than the sum of its parts. The action can become confusing and the language overblown. As usual, though, the author displays much cunning and wit as he grapples seriously with political themes. (Sept.)

World Fantasy Award–winner VanderMeer makes a triumphant return to Ambergris, the fungus-shrouded metropolis he first chronicled in City of Saints and Madmen (2001), in this masterful if difficult fantasy novel. Janice Shriek, a failed gallery owner and journalist, has ostensibly created an afterword to The Early History of Ambergris by her brother, Duncan Shriek, a talented if unconventional historian who finds his career in shambles after his controversial theories concerning Ambergris's founding and the genocide perpetrated against its nonhuman inhabitants gain public disfavor. Worse yet, he's caught in a love affair with one of his students, Mary Sabon. A tragic, brooding figure, Duncan makes repeated journeys underground, into the world of the alien gray caps, and is eventually transformed into something both wonderful and inhuman. Ambergris is a city of magnificent, decaying architecture and multiple baroque religions, where publishers fight wars for control of civilization and authors of obscure historical texts can be major bestsellers at the Borges Bookstore. Fans of Mark Z. Danielewski, Angela Carter and Borges will be well rewarded. (Aug.)

Dangerous family secrets and the growing threat of Salka invasion make for arcane bombast and treacherous politics in May's taut, fast-paced third Boreal Moon Tale (after 2005's Ironcrown Moon). As King Conrig of High Blenholme readies for war with the tentacled Salka, his official heir, son Orrion, foolishly bargains with the ancient magical Beaconfolk to gain the hand of his true love, Nyla, rather than wed Hyndry, the daughter of King Somarus, Conrig's ally. The Beaconfolk take his sword arm, leaving him unfit to rule and the fate of the royal dynasty in turmoil. Meanwhile, Deveron Austrey, Conrig's former spy, seeks Dyfrig, Conrig's true firstborn son and heir, and the wife Conrig divorced years earlier, in the hope of setting things right. Given the complex backstory as well as the immense cast, new readers would do well to start with the first of this epic fantasy series, Conqueror's Moon (2004). (Aug.)

The nameless protagonist of Garris's unsubtle novel chronicling the all-consuming, soul-sucking nature of Hollywood grabs at a second chance after his first movie out of film school bombs. Alas, his second film, which exploits a mutant baby, is another dud. Our hero gradually builds a modest career, explores Old Hollywood via sex with a raised-from-the-dead Jean Harlow and hits bottom again before he resigns himself to writing for TV. Further tragedy inspires his next pitch: a reality TV show titled Suicide! with his on-screen death as the first episode. The now-deceased filmmaker spends the novel's second half as a disembodied spirit in search of bodies to inhabit. The author, a Hollywood veteran (he created Showtime's Masters of Horror series), explores a kinky love-hate relationship with "Lady Hollywood" in this disjointed debut, which offers a lot more sex and gore than Entertainment Tonight, but not much more insight. (Aug.)

British author Newman channels the glam '70s in this spirited collection of eight stories that celebrate Richard Jeperson, an agent of the titular club—the "least-known branch of the United Kingdom's intelligence and investigative services." Blending SF with supernatural whimsy, Newman (Anno Dracula) conjures up the exploits of a psychically gifted Day-Glo–era ghost hunter and his fellow paranormal investigators, vixen Vanessa (an "s.b.g.," or stunningly beautiful girl) and sidekick Fred Regent. Particularly entertaining tales include "The Serial Murders," about ghostly chicanery on the set of a British soap, and "Egyptian Avenue," in which Richard investigates Kingstead Cemetery's restless wraiths while wearing "leopard-pattern safari jacket and tight white, high-waisted britches tucked into sturdy fell-walker's boots." Think Steed and Peel hop in Dr. Who's time machine with Austin Powers's panache. (Aug.)

Mass Market

In the latest novel from the popular African-American romance writer, prominent Charlotte, N.C., newspaper publisher Alexander Rice is struggling to distance himself from his former life as a violent member of the criminal underworld. When he meets ravishing garage owner Topaz Emerson, who has drawn the attention of every man in town and the ire of most women, he's hooked. Their relationship burns slowly, as Alex tries to protect Topaz from an aggressive real estate magnate who is using brute force to buy up all the businesses on Topaz's block. When their relationship heats up, though, Alex's secrets drive him to keep Topaz at a distance. Pushing toward a dangerous confrontation with the crooked men behind Lockhurst Properties, Alex finds he must spill his secrets and face his past head on, risking the love he and Topaz share in order to protect her. Washington's story of love, career and forgiveness is both sexy and earnest. Genuine relationships are the main draw in Washington's novels, and she does not disappoint—though too many times she narrates when her strong, smart characters could just as easily speak for themselves. (Aug.)

Remember the Fates, those ancient Greek spinners, weavers and snippers of life's threads? They're back in McCullough's original and outstanding debut, and still ruling destiny—but with their own digital web, based on a server called the Fate Core. Power-hungry as ever, they've coded a spell to eliminate human free will. Unluckily for them, one of their demigod descendants is a cheerfully rebellious hacker-sorcerer named Ravirn who, when not studying for college midterms, likes to mess around on their web with the help of his familiar, Melchior, who can change from a goblin to a laptop. Ravirn and Melchior, let loose in McCullough's delightfully skewed and fully formed world—much like our own, but with magic, paranormally advanced technology and Greek gods—set out to thwart Ravirn's "great-to-the-nth-degree aunt[s]," careening from one discovery to another, enlisting unlikely allies and narrowly evading destruction at the hands of both Fates and Furies. McCullough handles his plot with unfailing invention, orchestrating a mixture of humor, philosophy and programming insights that give new meaning to terms as commonplace as "spell checker" and esoteric as "programming in hex." Though a preponderance of techie-talk may put off some readers, this is the kind of title that could inspire an army of rabid fans; it's a good thing a sequel is planned for 2007. (Aug.)

Bestseller Goodman begins her latest Regency with a wordy description of a romantic tryst at a masquerade ball, a fair warning of the rambling and randy story to come. At the ball, a ravishing Boudicca, looking every bit the warrior queen, captures the eye of the bored host, Christopher Hollins, earl of Ferrin. A notorious rake, Ferrin can't believe his fortune when the mysterious Boudicca seduces him before vanishing. With a little snooping, Ferrin identifies the elusive siren as Cybelline Caldwell, a grieving young widow and mother, recently relocated to the Suffolk countryside. Absorbed in restoring a neglected estate and trying to forget her impetuous actions at the ball—her first break from secluded widowhood—Cybelline is alarmed to learn that Ferrin is residing nearby under an assumed name. When he rescues Cybelline from a blizzard, Ferrin seizes the opportunity to insinuate himself into her household. While trying to win her heart, Ferrin discovers that the wary young woman hides dangerous secrets, including the truth behind her husband's suicide and a sinister threat posed by a nameless stalker. Though a bit overwritten, Goodman knows how to turn up the heat; unfortunately, readers probably won't get much satisfaction from the contrived ending. (Aug.)

Comics

Myrick (Bright Elegy) shares slices of his own childhood in this graphic memoir: his birth at the moment of his grandmother's death; a magical Fourth of July, lighting firecrackers in a tree in the yard; a boyhood ritual of skinny-dipping in a pond in the woods; his first failed attempt at romance. He paints childhood as both simple and complex, mixing the joy of folding the perfect paper airplane with the family tragedy of watching his older brother sentenced to 10 years in prison. The words outline the stories in minimal dialogue and lyrical captions, making each section a visual poem. At the end, Myrick sets out on a cross-country motorcycle journey, leaving behind Missouri and all the places steeped in memories of childhood for California, marking his final journey to adulthood. The block colors and rough outlines of the art evoke unsentimental nostalgia for Myrick's youth. The subject matter is reminiscent of such cartoon memoirs as Chester Brown's I Never Liked You and John Porcellino's Perfect Example, but its episodic nature doesn't really hold together as a narrative, and the end result is more evocative than riveting. (Sept.)

Derived from Japanese boys' love comics (yaoi/shonen-ai), this tells the story of Brian, a newcomer to his suburban high school, and his budding romance with Chris, a classmate. Denson substitutes reality for romance, confronting issues of adolescent homosexuality with a self-conscious sincerity. Often times, the boys are suspended between cold reality, as when the jocks in the school assault Brian, and bliss, when Chris and Brian are able to act as a couple. Denson's jagged illustration evokes a punk rock aesthetic that harkens back to the anti-establishment sentiment of adolescence. Unfortunately, true to adolescence, much of Tough Love is portrayed with an awkwardness that flattens intense moments of confrontation. For instance, in Brian's coming-out scene with his mother, she expresses disappointment but remains relatively unfazed. While Denson attempts a more realistic portrayal of teen homosexuality than is seen in Japanese comics, sometimes the real-life elements of the story feel the most fantastic. However, as the first book to combine the cute guys of yaoi manga with the American sensibility of gay pride, Tough Love becomes a shy, anxious testament to growing up gay in suburbia. (June)

[Signature]

Reviewed by Richard Howard

As fastidious as he is famous (both qualifications remarkable for an American poet of this day and age), Strand allows this new book to show all the signs of pruning and purging. The sieve of art descends into the well of intimate contemplation and retrieves 23 closely reasoned poems remarkably consistent in the character of the Baffled Seer persisting in the double terror (or is it joy?) of all Strand's expression: evanescence of the longed-for Other, desolate wonder of the self.

It is no surprise, rather a sort of consolation, that except for the two poems commissioned to be read between movements of three Webern quartets and a Heyden quartet, most of these poems scrupulously record the actions and adventures of that wonderful "I," the character whose accents it has been Strand's genius to create in book after book: "I went to the middle of the room and called out," "I closed my eyes briefly," "I filled page after page," "I am not thinking of death," "...there would be a fire and I would walk into it," "I said that the dawning of the unknown was always before us," "I ran downstairs and called for my horse," "I'm going down," said I. And in the archetypal title poem: "I sat on the porch having a smoke" when the Other (here the Muse, the Mirage and what Strand calls "the ideal image for all uncommon couples") appears to the expectant smoker, "...just as they were vanishing/ the man and camel ceased to sing." The vision fades, the bereft self cannot be accommodated.

The two chamber music commissions are curiously Miltonic (impersonally sumptuous) in their chastened baroque tonalities, but however grandly invested in the mysteries of music ("the secret voice of being telling us/ that where we disappear is where we are") and of spiritual dedication ("to know/ at last that nothing is more real than nothing"), Strand more characteristically winnows a familiar comfort from "My Name," one of the loveliest and humblest poems he has yet written, from whose 12 lines I cite only the final few as a sort of hostage to greatness:

...and I heard

my name as if for the first time, heard it the way

one hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off

as though it belonged not to me but to the silence

from which it had come and to which it would go.

(Sept.)

Richard Howard is a poet, critic and translator. He teaches in the School of the Arts at Columbia University.