From the Publisher

After years of unrequited love, a lonely man commits a desperate act that affects the lives of everyone it touches, triggering a chain of events no one could have anticipated.

Author Biography: Elliot Perlman was born in 1964. He lives in New York City and in Melbourne, where he works as a barrister.

The New York Times - Daphne Merkin

… all of this material is clearly dear to Perlman's heart, which brings me to what may be the most important aspect of his novel -- what would once have been called its soul. Perlman has been compared to Jonathan Franzen and Philip Roth, but he strikes me as less like them -- or like most contemporary writers, for that matter -- than like one of those energetic Victorian novelists who had ''the art of seeing all the world as the potentiality of fiction,'' to quote Nabokov again. There are traces of Dickens's range in Perlman and of George Eliot's generous humanist spirit. No, he's not there yet. He could use more humor, and he doesn't have to tell us everything he's ever heard or seen or read. All the same, this is an exciting gamble of a novel, one willing to lose its shirt in its bid to hold you. Be prepared to give it time. Be prepared to skim when you come to a particularly annoying digression. But most of all be prepared to stay with it for the long haul. It's worth it.

Publishers Weekly

By copping the title of William Empson's classic of literary criticism, Australian writer Perlman (Three Dollars) sets a high bar for himself, but he justifies his theft with a relentlessly driven story, told from seven perspectives, about the effects of the brief abduction of six-year-old Sam Geraghty by Simon Heywood, his mother Anna's ex-boyfriend. Charismatic, unemployed Simon is still obsessed with Anna nine years after their breakup-to the dismay of his present lover, Angelique, a prostitute. Anna's stockbroker husband, Joe, is one of Angelique's regulars, which feeds Simon's flame. When Angelique turns Simon in to the cops, he claims he had permission to pick Sam up; his fate hinges on whether Anna will back up his lie. Most of the perspectives are linked to Simon's shrink, Alex Klima, who writes to Anna and counsels Simon, Angelique and Joe's co-worker, Dennis. The most successful voices belong to Joe, who's spent his career on the edge of panic, and Dennis, whose bitter rants provide a corrective to Klima's unctuous psychological omniscience. Perlman, a lawyer, aims for a literary legal novel-think Grisham by way of Franzen-and the ambition is admirable though the product somewhat uneven. Simon's obsessions, his self-righteousness and his psychological blackmail, give him a perhaps unintended creepiness, and the novel, as big and juicy as it is, may not offer sufficient closure. Agent, Sarah Chalfant. (Dec.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The half-hearted kidnapping of young Sam Geraghty sets in motion this intricately plotted first novel about a small group of Australians in crisis. Ten years after being dumped, Simon Heywood is still obsessed with his ex-girlfriend Anna Geraghty and has kidnapped her son to "save" him from his parents' loveless marriage. Call girl Angelique, who lives with Simon, services Anna's shallow stockbroker husband, Joe, and his frustrated business partner, Dennis Mitchell. Joe and Dennis's relationship implodes after a big medical contract falls through, and after a breakdown, Dennis begins to see psychiatrist Alex Klima, who is friends with Simon. And so on. There's much to digest in this overstuffed novel, with sidebars devoted to discussions of prostitution, the Australian legal process, prison life, managed care, and even the art of counting cards in blackjack. Add to that the sheer selfishness and self-righteous attitude of the majority of the characters, and you could imagine an unreadable mess. But despite its long-windedness and dangerous flirtation with clich (e.g., the successful father who spoils his child but doesn't understand him), the novel works, and, for many readers, it will work in spades. The Australian-born Perlman reaches for the brass ring, and he successfully shapes this heady material into an all-too-rare literary page-turner. Recommended. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/04.]-Marc Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib., PA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Constant love in the face of terrible odds-such is the old-fashioned but deeply satisfying theme in a thoroughly modern Australian import. Antipodean barrister and second-novelist Perlman (Three Dollars, 1999) collects award nominations at a Coetzeean rate, but those in search of an intelligent and intelligible read should not be put off by the prizes and the surrounding puffery. This is a love story in the 19th-century tradition, the kind that makes the real world seem a bit dim. Narrated sequentially by seven of the participants, the novel follows the disastrous consequences of an act of love. Intellectually and emotionally gifted schoolteacher Simon Heywood was stunned and disbelieving when Anna, the beautiful, brainy lover he met in college suddenly and without explanation dumped him. Ten years after the fact, he still hasn't accepted the rejection. It didn't compute for him then and it doesn't compute for him now, despite Anna's having married brash stockbroker Joe Geraghty and given birth to a son, Sam. There has been no contact between the former lovers, but Simon has followed Anna's unhappy life in an unhealthily close and secret way, seeking always to understand what happened and how he can recover her love, coming to care so much for her son in the process that, when he decides that Anna's failing marriage is not good for the boy, he kidnaps the child. In addition to Simon, the narrators of the calamity he sets off include Angela, a prostitute who loves Simon and services Joe; Alex, a psychiatrist who abandons impartiality in his concern and love for Simon; Joe and Anna Geraghty; and, finally, Alex's daughter. The emotional disaster is played out in court, and the aftershockscause crumblings years later. Long enough to tell everything that needs to be told, but never ponderous and never overdone. George Eliot down under.

Product Details

• ISBN: 0641876068
  
• ISBN-13: 9780641876066
• Format: Paperback, 640pp
• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Pub. Date: November 2005
• Edition Description: Bargain

• Read an Excerpt

Read an Excerpt

Seven Types of Ambiguity

RIVERHEAD BOOKS

Chapter One

He is wrong, though. You didn't read poetry at all. He had wanted you to read poetry, but you didn't. If pressed, he confesses to an imprecise recollection of what it was you read and, anyway, it wasn't your reading that started this. It was the laughter, the carefree laughter, the three-dimensional Coca-Cola advertisement that you were, the try-anything-once friends, the imperviousness to all that came before you, the chain telephone calls, the in-jokes, the instant music, the sunlight you carried with you, the way he felt when you spoke to his parents, the introductory undergraduate courses, theinevitability of your success, the beach houses, the white lace underwear, the private dancing, the good-graced acceptance of part-time shift work, the apparent absence of expectations, the ever-changing disposable cults of the rural, the family, the eastern, the classical, the modern, the postmodern, the impoverished, the sleekly deregulated, the orgasm, the feminine, the feminist, and then the way you canceled with the air of one making a salad.

You would love the way he sees you. He uses you as a weapon against himself and not merely because you did. He sits in his car at traffic lights on his way out sometimes and tries to estimate how many times he has sat here, waiting at these traffic lights on his way somewhere without you, hoping to meet someone with the capacity to consign you to an anecdote, to be eventually confused with others. He thinks of you when the woman lying next to him thinks he's asleep. It would not surprise you that there are many women. Do you remember you thought him beautiful? You never told him. He had to assume it. He was beautiful and is now, some nine years later, even more so. The years have refined him so that once-boyish good looks have evolved into a clean, smooth charm. Not always though. First thing in the morning or after he's been drinking the charm disappears. The drinking is not really the problem at the moment though, not right now. Of late it has been no more of a problem with him than it is with your husband, which is to say, of late the quantity itself is no cause for alarm. But there is a secret need in both men to have their inhibitors inhibited. In Simon's case this is merely the tip of an older and more fundamental iceberg.

It is often almost too much for Simon to undertake even basic daily tasks: to shower and shave, to dress, to wash his clothes, to feed himself and Empson. He runs out of all but the most essential of foods and doesn't do anything about it until there's nothing for the dog to eat. You couldn't know Empson. Simon got him as a puppy. He would be about three and a half now. He used to take him to school with him. This was the sort of thing he would do. The children loved Empson almost as much as they loved Simon. You loved him, too. I can imagine he was a wonderful teacher. You might remember that Simon's father, William (or did you call him Mr. Heywood?), was disappointed that Simon was going to be a teacher, particularly a primary-school teacher. He felt that this was not a sufficiently manly occupation for his son and that Simon would be wasted. Ironically though, had Simon still been teaching, William may not have felt the need to contact me.

It was very late one night. I could tell by his voice that William was embarrassed. He was at home and I was, of course, in my office getting the last little bit of my dinner from the bottom of a cup. I don't know why he thought I'd still be there. He almost whispered into the telephone that he was calling on his son's behalf but without his knowledge. For all his embarrassment, and I have since learned that this is characteristic of him, he very soon got to the point. He told me he had a thirty-two-year-old son who lived alone with a dog in an apartment by the sea, in Elwood. He told me that his son, always obsessed with poetry, seldom went out since losing his job in the first wave of the downsizing epidemic. In getting directly to the point, William missed so many others. Simon has said that the reason his father has no time for poetry is that he is afraid of the messiness of life. Poetry feeds on all that spills over the boundaries of the usual things, the everyday things with which most people are obsessed, so William has no time for it. He cannot think of anything more unnecessary. What about you? What's your excuse?

Chapter Two

At first there was nothing to be done because, as I explained to William, Simon had to want to see me. I couldn't call him up and say, "Your father thinks you're disturbed in some way. How's Wednesday at four?" Since he had never broached the subject with Simon, I really didn't know what he thought I could do. We said good-bye and that, I thought, would be the end of it. Clearly, it wasn't.

About a month later William and Simon's mother, May, were out for dinner with Henry and Diane Osborne. You may remember the Osbornes; they are Simon's parents' closest friends. Simon assures me that Henry's contempt for poetry is probably second only to his father's. It was a Friday night and the Osbornes had taken Simon's parents to a French restaurant to celebrate William's retirement from the bank that very day. As they were leaving, having been feted by the owner, a drunk Simon literally walked into his parents, apparently by chance, with his arm around the waist of a very attractive young woman. The two older couples, seeing the short-skirted advertisement for herself that she was, guessed her occupation fairly quickly and were clearly embarrassed. William started to apologize to everyone as though he were responsible. Henry tried to make light of it, asking the young woman if she had ever eaten at the restaurant before. Simon was trying to hail a taxi and the young woman, who said her name was Angelique, told him she had eaten there many times and that the owner was a client.

On the Monday Simon called me. He told me the whole story and explained that it was a condition of the rapprochement with his parents that he arrange to see me. It was a brief conversation. He said that he would rather we didn't meet in my office and gave an address at which I was to meet him one evening. It was summer then, and he said to come around the back into the garden where he would be waiting. I wouldn't normally ever agree to an arrangement like this, but something in his voice, an intelligence, and the honesty with which he told the story about his parents, the Osbornes, and Angelique-a disarming honesty-made me agree. And, if I am to share the honesty I admired in Simon, I needed another full-paying private client. I still do. My wife and I have recently separated.

Chapter Three

Simon was sitting on a chair under a sun umbrella in a large well-cared-for garden with an in-ground swimming pool in the center and birches and firs along the perimeter. He got up, and we shook hands and introduced ourselves. I was struck by his clean handsomeness and by his calm. One rarely meets anyone who makes a better first impression than Simon. Do you remember? He thanked me for coming, saying he realized such a meeting was probably unusual. I said something banal about having to expect the unexpected in my line of business and then he quoted someone, some verse about surprises or chance, in that soothing voice of his. I don't know why, but I was a bit nervous. He asked me questions as though he was interviewing me and making mental notes: middle-aged, separated, lives in inner city, et cetera. I must have passed because he seemed to take a bit of a liking to me, albeit with some reserve. Perhaps I didn't fit his stereotype of a psychiatrist. I don't know. He told me not to completely ignore whatever it was his father had told me about him, saying his father's description of him no doubt contained what Simon called "that dangerous element of truth," just enough to make me suspect that everything else his father had said, and would ever say, was true.

He was utterly charming, witty, and seemingly quite relaxed and intelligent. I was a little surprised he hadn't offered me at least a drink, but I didn't comment. We Europeans are instinctively better hosts, whether we have personality disorders or not. I didn't know him, and perhaps he would never again be so forthcoming. It's not that I expect patients to entertain me, but the circumstances here were quite unusually informal. And 1 didn't want to interrupt him. Perhaps he felt a little uncomfortable offering me his parents' alcohol. I figured a place of that size with the in-ground pool, the tennis court, and the satellite dish had to belong to his parents. They must have agreed to go out for the evening as part of the deal.

"I am a thirty-two-year-old out-of-work teacher living on my own in an apartment in Elwood," he laughed, "but just because I don't work doesn't mean I'm broken."

Then, after some small talk, he started telling me about you. At first I didn't realize how long it had been since you had been together. It wasn't clear, so I asked him.

"It was finished nine years ago," he said, "and you want to know why I'm still talking about it, right?"

"No, I didn't say that," I responded.

"No. You didn't, but only because my father is paying you not to tell me I'm mad, or at least to tell him first. I think it's admirable what you guys do but, shit, it's embarrassingly primitive, wouldn't you say? What do you really know? And in any particular case, in my case, what do you really want to know? I'm afraid it won't make sense to you. I really mean that. I am genuinely afraid it won't make sense. 1 am not trying to sound casual or smug.

"Listen-all that she was then, all that she is now, those gestures, everything I remember but won't or can't articulate anymore, the perfect words that are somehow made imperfect when used to describe her and all that should remain unsaid about her-it is all unsupported by reason. I know that. But that enigmatic calm that attaches itself to people in the presence of reason-it's something from which I haven't been able to take comfort, not reliably, nor since her.

"It's like the smell of burned toast. You made the toast. You looked forward to it. You even enjoyed making it, but it burned. What were you doing? Was it your fault? It doesn't matter anymore. You open the window, but only the very top layer of the smell goes away. The rest remains around you. It's on the walls. You leave the room, but it's on your clothes. You change your clothes, but it's in your hair. It's on the thin skin on the tops of your hands. And in the morning, it's still there."

Chapter Four

This charming young man is eloquently expressing his quite legitimate doubts about the science or discipline that has brought me to him. He seems to have a fairly common and not necessarily unhealthy antagonism toward his petit-bourgeois father, who it appears has a somewhat authoritarian personality. They don't understand each other. They value different things but not different enough for the father's alarm bells to ring hollow with the unemployed aesthete in front of me. It gets to him. But not as much as you do. He's a romantic, focusing on some idealization of the past. He could have offered me at least an iced tea, but I was getting paid and he was, after all, the kind we dream of: one of the incurably worried-well. He was a little melancholic but not completely without some justification. There was no reason this could not go on for years. I thought he was normal, a bit unhappy-pretty much like everyone.

We heard someone walking along the side of the house toward us. Maybe it was more than one person.

Continues...

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Excerpted from Seven Types of Ambiguity by ELLIOT PERLMAN Copyright © 2003 by Elliot Perlman. Excerpted by permission.
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