Paisley Girl

By turns stark and insouciant, dry-witted and desperately honest, composed of trendy vernacular and poetic images, Gordon's memorable first novel mixes reflections on body, mind, illness and soul with far-flung adventures in youth culture. ""Word has spread of my body, painted in the grotesque..."" the narrator begins; she suffers from mast-cell leukemia, a rare disease that causes her skin to break out in eerily beautiful leaflike patterns. (Gordon herself, we are told in the promo copy, has suffered from the same disease.) The reader first encounters the heroine (known only as Paisley) in a hospital, where she staunchly refuses to pity herself as a horde of medical students hovers around and inspects her body. Her life outside the hospital is no less painful: still scarred, she lives for a while with her brother (""premed... and allergic to hospitals""), and then with her horrified parents in an unspecified Southern town. Fragmented scenes from the past flit across Paisley's mind: drug-hazed days and nights with her pop-musician boyfriend, Crash, on the London club scene (""Crash loved me for my lucent skin and I accepted his knighthood, wide-eyed""), childhood memories of French cigarettes and birthday parties. Then, using Crash's credit card, she flies to Barbados, where she gets mixed up with cocaine smugglers as she desperately seeks a new life. Sometimes affecting, sometimes abrupt and affectless, Gordon's prose dares readers to come close, but not too close: her detached and fragmentary style recalls Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted. Some readers will find the repeated accounts of illness overwhelming, while others will wish for more introspection and less intrigue once Paisley lands in Barbados. Finally, though, Gordon keeps her difficult balance: her stylish tale of illness and self-discovery will be particularly appreciated by members of her generation. (Oct.)