Stomp

Interleaved with accounts of the pi a colada sunsets from the jet-set journalist-turned-novelist narrator's present-day life, this nostalgic novel recalls the summer of 1957, when the young Ray ""Skeeter"" Hawkins fell in love with the woman who haunts him still. When Angie Boudreau gets off the Spokane Greyhound at the Umatilla, Ore., drugstore where Skeeter works, the 16-year-old kid--given his nickname because, until his recent growth spurt, he'd been ""no bigger than a mosquito""--is immediately smitten by the ear-pierced, almond-eyed stranger who's reading Camus. He soon has a rival for Angie's attentions, however--the school's star halfback, Billy Karady. So insular is Umatilla that, even when Karady attempts to rape Angie, and a number of other rapes occur nearby, his status as an athlete and minion of the larger-than-life Coach Mungo protects him. Angie and Ray begin going steady, and the self-obsessed, troubled Karady stalks the naive lovers. After Karady becomes more threatening, shooting at them and attempting to run them off the road, the sweethearts, influenced by the tenets of existentialism they have read about, take matters into their own hands. The plot then becomes dubious, with absurd crimes, cover-ups and disappearances. To Van Pelt's credit, he captures the feel of adolescence in the 1950s, but the narrative suffers after Angie moves away and the narrator discusses his adult life in slightly offensive terms. His wife, ""the Filipina,"" reminds him of Angie physically, and is a real catch because she's ""good-looking, uncomplicated, and caring."" It is not until he's in New Orleans for an American Booksellers Association convention--he's been publishing novels under the pseudonym Nicholas van Pelt, and, like Thomas Pynchon, has never allowed a photo of himself to be published--that Ray Hawkins discovers what really happened to Billy Karady. The self-referentiality of this novel destroys the suspense and makes it almost farcical. (June)