cover image Reunion

Reunion

David Daniel. Thomas Dunne Books, $24.95 (322pp) ISBN 978-0-312-36371-0

Ghosts of the past haunt the present in Daniel's ninth novel (after The Marble Kite), a scattered affair that offers nothing surprising save for a distracting detour into the complicated territory of time-travel and mind-swapping. In September 1994, 48-year-old Tom Knowles attends his 30th high school reunion, where an old buddy, Paul ""Brain"" McClain, surprises the alumni with a hologram show featuring three-dimensional images of the teenaged gang at a high school dance, including the 1963 version of Tom, a shy would-be writer nicknamed TK. Things go well until an electrical mishap leads to the psyches of Tom and TK merging. Dual narratives then follow Tom as he attempts to find a ""reconciliation of then and now"" and TK, with his new knowledge of the future, trying to stop the local heartthrob from shipping off to Vietnam and having premonitions about JFK's assassination. Unfortunately, the parallel plots prevent either from gaining momentum, and the pages are full of underdeveloped possibilities. A strange literary hybrid of The Last Picture Show and Back to the Future, the novel ends up feeling both thin and over-crowded.