cover image The Miserables

The Miserables

Damien Wilkins. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P, $22.95 (298pp) ISBN 978-0-15-160523-1

This first novel is at sea both literally and figuratively. On a ferry crossing New Zealand's Cook Strait is 30-year-old Brett Healey, a literary editor and world-class nudge who spends half his time fretting about his deep personal isolation, the other half trying to extricate himself from the awkward social situations into which his indecisiveness leads him. Returning from his grandfather's funeral, Healey coolly examines his alienated life. Two on-board events bring him out of his self-obsession: a fellow passenger solicits his help in a sordid scheme, and a young boy nearly dies of hypothermia. The author, who won the Heinemann Reed Fiction Award for a collection of short stories ( The Veteran Perils ), gets distressingly lost in this longer narrative among the many layers of Healey's tedious memories. ``Strange'' is the novel's first word and ``tenderness'' its last; in between, Wilkins does manage to achieve a strange quality of tenderness, but it isn't enough. The flaccid plot and dull protagonist's malaise simply overwhelm some very lovely prose. (Nov.)