Jade Slash Laverna

In her second novel (after Mumsahib), Montagnes strives to portray the violence inherent in human nature. Zeeb Porteus, seeking to recover from a fight with his girlfriend and to work on his thesis, retreats for one week to the cabin owned by Polly, the lesbian lover of his deceased mother, in a remote Canadian wilderness upon which civilization is beginning to trespass. He is disconcerted to discover that Polly's Uncle Paddy, a beloved father figure, is being cared for there by Mike, a closeted crossdresser whose strange and violent upbringing has made him an abuser of women. Enter Lisa and Jade, vacationing roommates from Toronto. Like Mike, Jade, nee Laverna (hence the title), was abused as a child, though her sufferings have made her passive, beaten down in spirit and numbly available for further abuse. Her path crosses with Mike's with predictably horrifying results. Passages at the beginning of each chapter grant access to Polly's thoughts as she seeks spiritual solace in a local Buddhist temple. These brief life-is-suffering contemplations, though lyrical, do little to dignify an ending that involves rape with a fishing rod, animal abuse and maggoty decomposition. Montages's tracking of the ineluctable mutual attraction between victim and abuser is intriguing, but she illustrates her point with gaudy images nailed to the page with a sledgehammer. (Oct.)