The Inner Life of Objects

Do objects possess knowledge, memories or souls? In her intellectually and spiritually provocative second book (after Handbook of the Strange), Combs presents the thesis implicit in her title through the interconnected experiences of five very different people. At the center of the story is 59-year-old Opal Kirschbaum, who's having her first twinges of doubt about the three decades she's spent working at the Zoetic Society, an organization that researches and documents paranormal phenomena. Opal schedules speakers for the society, edits the newsletter and occasionally writes an article, while her retired city-planner husband, Sol Olevsky, resumes his long-abandoned passion for art. Two volunteers at the society include Poppy Greengold, a young mother with a goddess obsession, and Geneva Lamb, a cynical Yeats scholar who found her way to the society hoping to gain insight into the mysticism of her subject. Abel Moore is a widower developed psychic powers after a brain operation: by sensing vibrations that objects emit, he sometimes locates missing children and money. Abel's success rate is only 33%, however, and he hasn't had a successful ""reading"" in six months. Invited to give a talk before the society, Abel worries: will he be able to deliver the goods? This novel of ideas moves quickly with taut prose and a dynamic ensemble of characters. The narrative is enlivened by true-to-life, humorously infuriating marital squabbles. Yet in her meditations on inanimate objects, Combs goes to the heart of human loneliness, while producing rigorous metaphors and metaphysical puzzles. These ruminations form a kind of still life in which her characters' emotional and spiritual depths are revealed. In an era when many seem to be searching for greater meaning, Combs offers readers a fascinating examination of the nature of belief and how it colors perception. (Nov.)