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'emews^L H ? Mt Rocket City by Cathryn Alpert MacMurray & Beck, 1995, 347 pp., $22.95 Comedy abounds in Rocket City, Cathryn Alperfs darkly funny first novel. In this relentlessly contemporary tale, nobody seems to have any historical memory prior to June 16, 1945, the date of the first atomic explosion near Alamogordo, New Mexico—"Rocket City." But scratch the surface and you find a comic structure rooted in myth and fable. The two main characters, Figman and Marilee Levitay, are selfexiled Californians whose separate but parallel journeys through the New Mexico landscape lead to involvements with unlikely bedfellows . Marilee, an art therapist from Sherman Oaks, experiences aimless discontent for all the "merry levity " of her name, and Figman, a former insurance adjuster in Accidental Death and Dismemberment suffers from hypochondriac "figments " of the imagination. Their masterfully orchestrated parallel stories converge obviously only twice— once in a narrowly avoided head-on collision, and once again in a bar. But they have in common frequent migraines, a tropism for order in a messy world, a search for fulfillment and a series of coincidental experiences. A pattern emerges, in which the two main characters grapple with evil and suffering at the same time that they are barreling headlong into romance. Figman holes up in Artesia , New Mexico, dodging a threatened lawsuit after surviving a horrific auto accident. In between his absurd attempts to find consolation and fame as a painter, he embarks on an iU-fated love affair before discovering, almost by accident, a more consummate love. Meanwhile, Marilee, en route to Alamogordo to marry her duU fiancé, Larry, picks up a hitchiking dwarf, Enoch Swann, and ends up tooling around in the desert with him. Against her better judgment, she is enchanted: "He could have been a character right out of one of her forgotten dreams." The novel's surprising climax takes place in a bar called the Launch Pad, where Marilee impulsively performs an act that shows her what it means to cause suffering. From migraine to nuclear apocalypse, disaster looms on the horizon. Life therefore requires of us a certain degree of compassion. It is a familiar theme, but Alperfs comic invention makes it seem refreshingly new. Heading West by Doris Betts Scribner, 1995, 368 pp., $12 (pb. reissue) The Missouri Review · 207 Betts' novel offers an entertaining , thought-provoking and suspenseful escape into the what-ifs of our daydreams. At the center is Nancy Finch, a thirtyish, southern small-town librarian, chafing against the demands of an ailing family and the disappointments of liaisons with men who are either married or, as one character teUs her, "in bad taste." While vacationing with her sister and brother-inlaw , Nancy is kidnapped at gunpoint by a young, reasonably attractive man, and transported westward across the country. A dreamer and a romantic, Nancy is at first actually caught up in the thrill of the adventure. She and her kidnapper develop an uneasy alliance, and after a few attempts at escape Nancy begins to question her tacit compliance, her need to escape her lonely, smothered life. In evocative language, using wry and precise details, Betts illuminates Nancy's predicament. Nancy is an appealing character, armed as she is with a sharp, intelligent wit, living out the ironies of her kidnapping . A suspenseful confrontation between protagonist and antagonist in the Grand Canyon establishes Betts' abilities to create both a fascinating character study and a thriller, with vivid descriptions of the pair in their climactic moment of conflict—a moment that reverberates in unexpected ways throughout the rest of the book. Like a satisfying daydream, the book ends with Nancy emerging from her adventure in a somewhat unrealistic and romantic fashion. Even so, the story of Nancy's circuitous release from captivity is well worth the very enjoyable time spent reading it. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon Villard Books, 1995, 368 pp., $23 Too often novels about writers troU the outworn refrain that the lifestyle is sad and lonely, the creation of art as painful as giving birth. Yet Michael Chabon's rendition of the writer's blues in his second novel , Wonder Boys, is so intricately orchestrated that the reader hardly recognizes the popular...

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