THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, September 28, 1994 TAG: 9409280044
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JENNIFER DAVIS MCDAID, SPECIAL TO THE DAILY BREAK
LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
A MYSTERIOUS ERRAND, a blood-stained wall and a roomful of flies spell trouble for Marta Brooks in Craig Nova's ``The Book of Dreams'' (Ticknor & Fields, $22.95).
Following Raymond Chandler's dictum that a good novel of suspense is (at its most basic) about ``someone in a jam,'' Nova explores the converging lives of his characters against the deceptively sun-drenched backdrop of Hollywood. Nova's California is an unforgiving place, where parents rent birthday party guests for their children and the lonely find companionship in the classified ads. Amid fragrant orange groves, trouble lurks for Nova's trio of protagonists: a self-made mogul, a small-time drifter and a beautiful (but hapless) clerk.
College dropout Marta Brooks spends her days at the Romance Advertiser taking personal ads and nursing ailing plants. When her unscrupulous employer threatens to fire her unless she picks up a package for him, Marta takes the bait. She finds herself in a gangster's kitchen, holding a knife and looking down at a body.
Enter Victor Shaw, recent parolee from Soledad prison and sole witness to Marta's act of self-defense. Maintenance man by night and ambitious blackmailer by day, Victor believes he has found his ticket to riches. He is the second man to use Marta as a pawn, forcing her to pick up a bundle of extorted cash and accompany him to a party thrown by Warren Hodges, head of International Pictures. Warren is immediately attracted to Marta and, as a result, the lives of this unlikely trio are hopelessly intertwined.
Nova tells his story using the viewpoint of each of the characters in turn, traveling backward and forward in time. It is Marta, however, who is at the center of the novel's events. Her actions (carried out at the prompting of others) set in motion a chain of murder, deceit and destruction on Southern California's dusty canyon roads. When Marta finds herself inexplicably breaking the law and falling in love all in the same day, she is forced to abandon her ambivalence and decide what path her life will take.
``The Book of Dreams'' is divided into three sections, which move the novel along much like acts in a play. By telling his story in the voices of several characters, Nova fragments the narrative into even smaller segments. Portions of ``The Book of Dreams'' move at an almost painful pace (slowed considerably by Nova's inordinate fondness for the comma), while others are lyrical portraits of places and people.
Nova's writing has been compared by some critics to that of Raymond Chandler. Although both have dealt with the same geographical area, Nova is clearly a different breed of writer. Chandler's protagonists struggle to protect the innocent and destroy the wicked in a less than ideal world; Nova's trio struggles simply to survive. Both writers, however, evoke the scenic beauty, the seamy corruption and the lonely desperation of Southern California. Chandler would undoubtedly agree with Nova's introductory sentiment, borrowed from Groucho Marx, that while Hollywood is a warm place in the daytime, ``there's no place to go at night.'' MEMO: Jennifer Davis McDaid lives in Richmond and works at the Virginia State
Library and Archives.
by CNB