White Vespa

Oderman’s new novel (after Going) is a tale of sibling revenge set on the picturesque Dodecanese Islands during the summer of 1996. Middle-aged American photographer Myles Twomey, numb after the disappearance of his son and subsequent divorce, finds himself “closing up shop on a life [he’d] hardly inhabited” and drawn to the Greek isle by an entrancing photograph he took there the previous summer of a man on a white Vespa. While snapping photos to fulfill a coffee-table book contract, Myles befriends Jim, a vacationing English professor, and falls in with Anne Powell, a barmaid with a troubled past. Their budding romance, however, is strained by the arrival of Anne’s older brother, Paul, a “supernaturally vivacious” lounge lizard and self-assured gadabout. Anne has been stalking Paul of late, in part because he inherited their parents’ entire estate. Myles bears his personal losses with grace and comes to regard Anne as his possible salvation, but Paul’s increasingly malevolent behavior—with which Anne has been all too familiar since childhood—has everyone on edge. Myles is a sympathetic protagonist, and Oderman has a knack for keeping things moving and bringing the vibrant colors of the island to life. (Nov.)