A Riddle of Stars

Readers of Butler's debut novel will likely be torn between the desire to embrace its gloomy protagonist, Matt Quigley, and the desire to drop him from a great height. Having left his recently deceased grandfather's home on the Inish, a remote island off the west coast of Ireland, Matt comes to Boston to live with his American girlfriend, Lily Golden, but panicking at the commitment that entails, instead ends up sharing an apartment with a stranger in Cambridge. Jobless, Matt spends his days aimlessly driving around in an old Pontiac he affectionately dubs the Green Monster, ruminating on the Gaelic gruffness of his lonely upbringing. Having been denied cohesive family love, Matt's usual impulse has been to escape, first to Dublin on a short-lived foray into academe and the world of books, then to Lily upon his grandfather's death. In Cambridge, Matt, stricken with a paralytic depression, is both desperate and unwilling to do anything to change his fate. His one other companion, Rick, is a philandering car salesman whose risky shenanigans contrast with Matt's self-pitying inertia. The slow death of Lily's father, to whom Matt is irresistibly drawn, provides the catalyst that jolts Matt out of his torpor. Butler has a good ear for the rhythms of speech, with Matt's verbosity slamming humorously against American diction: ""`I want the ground to open and swallow me, to drown this slow explosion of consciousness in the dark womb of earth.' `Uh-oh,' Erica says. `I guess you're stoned.'"" But Matt's cerebral waffling and emotional masochism elicit little sympathy, and the geologic pace of the plot makes for a plodding read. (Nov.)