Being Written

In this first novelist's promising foray into metafiction, on-and-off second-person narrator Daniel Fischer has a talent for hearing the sound of a pencil scratching whenever someone is being written about. Otherwise, he's your standard red-haired, freckle-faced nebbish. After a lifetime apparently consigned to being part of the scenery in other characters' stories, a one-night stand with singer Delia Benson puts him in the limelight. As he awkwardly maneuvers himself into Delia's circle of friends—including her boyfriend, Graham, a struggling musician making ends meet as a gay-for-pay hooker—he second-guesses the purpose and extent of his role in the novel of Delia and Graham (passages of which appear throughout). Daniel reads a writing manual to determine what he should be doing and where the book is taking him, and in an attempt to make himself essential to Delia's and Graham's stories, he pulls strings to change their lives, but his plans massively backfire. Conescu's light, swift and nicely structured dark comedy puts to the test a character's ability to outwrite his own author. In the end, the author wins. (Sept.)