The Splintered Day

Structurally untraditional, sometimes erotic and sometimes painfully hip, Mina's first novel is a story of romantic exhilaration and disaffection among the youthful tribes of a profoundly multicultural New York City. It's a take-me-as-I-am tale of a young, bi- and very sexual Tamil-American woman who has a particular thing for black guys with dreadlocks. Constructed with chapters that read like independent stories, the plot resists synopsis: its variously named characters gradually turn out to be mostly the same people. The heroine--alternately named Lili, Neelan or N--is enthusiastically, problematically, even obsessively concerned with love and sex. Mina gives excited and explicit attention to her characters' erotic needs and acts, exploring their fantasies and pairing them off: it's boy meets girl, girl meets girl, gay meets straight, South Asian meets East Village, East Asian meets Afro-Caribbean, Margaret Atwood meets Riot Grrl. Readers of Dale Peck's Martin and John might recognize distant parallels, although the skewed and kaleidoscopic framework here is more idiosyncratic. Mina has found a structure and several voices suited to the deadening, tiring and confusing use-or-be-used world she describes. As alert to heritage as she remains, Mina can come across as a queer-positive Henry Miller for the year 2000, a chronicler of the ways and means that desire and angst make themselves felt. (July)