Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 12, 1995 TAG: 9502100032
SECTION: BOOK PAGE: F6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By Simon Beckett. Simon & Schuster. $22.
"Fine Lines," a dark comedy by Simon Beckett, reminds me of a term paper written by a bright but underachieving student, slapped together the night before the due date. The book starts out strong, loses speed toward the middle, gets weighed down by some cliched, ill-advised ingredients, and then collapses with a messy, totally unsatisfying conclusion that seems incomplete and all but reeks of 3 a.m. caffeine burn-out.
Donald, an aging, priggish, art-dealing neo-Humbert Humbert becomes obsessed with Anna, his pretty assistant, and he hatches a plot to spring her from the clutches of Marty, her geeky boyfriend. To seduce Anna, and initiate a break-up, Donald hires the vain Zeppo, an acerbic male model who behaves like he might have escaped from the wreckage of an understandably scrapped Martin Amis novel.
When Zeppo's initial attempts to woo Anna away from Marty don't succeed, Donald's plan escalates to more perverse, more menacing levels. The basic premise of "Fine Lines" is an interesting idea, sort of a Nicholson Baker-style take on "Cyrano de Bergerac." Unfortunately, Beckett isn't content simply to present a story about complex sexual and emotional deceptions; he has to throw in an idiotic, out-of-nowhere murder, an equally ridiculous cover-up, an unconvincing final twist, and a whole aquarium full of red herrings.
It's too bad Beckett didn't have more confidence in the less sensational elements of his story. "Fine Lines" is a pretty good book when the main weapons used are lies and facades, but when the author brings out the blunt instruments, the novel falls apart.
-NEIL HARVEY
After Gregory.
By Austin Wright. Baskerville. $20.
Austin Wright is a late-blooming success as a novelist, a 72-year-old retired professor of English who brings a sort of clanging disharmony to his writing that his admirers find hugely enchanting.
The disharmony may have a purpose; a sort of counterpoint to the scrambled brains and lives of Wright's characters who are in a terrible muddle. Gregory, you see, has popped up out of the water, disheveled in body and mind, and isn't at all sure why. Was he a failed suicide? A murderer trying to escape? Hard to tell. So when he tries to figure out what comes after Gregory, if anything, he wanders about America bumping up against drunken surgeons from his past, crackpot clergy, an assortment of women, until the whole thing drizzles down to an annoying drip in a Georgia motel room.
-ROBERT HILLDRUP
Good Bones and Small Murders.
By Margaret Atwood. Doubleday. $20.
"For some of us the mythologies are different." This line from "My Life as a Bat," one of the selections in Margaret Atwood's new book, capsulizes the collection as well as any line could. Each entry (story is a misnomer) is unique; the tying thread, if there is one, is that Atwood assumes throughout a viewpoint different from the expected or usual. Mythologies and assumptions are turned topsy turvy.
A feminist emphasis permeates the collection, but other subjects are broached as well. "There Was Once" is a marvelous spoof of political correctness; "Gertrude Talks Back" is a rewritten punchline to "Hamlet." Atwood retells the story of the creation of man, offers several versions of John McCrae's poem about Flanders fields, considers the typical characteristics of novels and even presents a choice of "Happy Endings."
With her razor-edged wit, Atwood pokes fun at human foibles and silliness. Each of these sharp, concise writings serves to provoke as well as tease. Ideas, notions, even words are twisted into new meanings. Preconceptions are dashed with wry humor. An applicable description is one she uses in "Iconography," when she refers to "mirror stories."
The book is short; each piece can be read in a matter of minutes. These are minutes that count.
Different readers will favor different writings for we each hold different mythologies dear. Perhaps, after Atwood, not quite so dear.
-MARY ANN JOHNSON
Fires of Eden.
By Dan Simmons. Putnam's. $22.95.
Stephen King praises veteran author Dan Simmons for writing "like a hot-rodding angel," and who could resist a story about Byron Trumbo, a thinly disguised Donald Trump-like real estate mogul, who is trying to sell his failing Hawaiian luxury resort to a wealthy Japanese investor. Add to that Eleanor Perry, a sweepstakes winner and history buff who is a direct descendant of a fictional love interest of Mark Twain. Then there are the mythic underworld creatures that appear with the erupting volcano, Byron's mistresses, his ex-wife and her lawyer. Oddly enough, it all works.
-JUDY KWELLER
Neil Harvey lives in Blacksburg.
Robert Hilldrup is a Richmond writer and former newspaperman.
Mary Ann Johnson teaches at Roanoke College.
Judy Kweller is vice president of an advertising agency.
by CNB