Irrawaddy Tango

Tango, the picaresque and sassy heroine of Law-Yone's second novel (after The Coffin Tree ), rides her flair for dancing from obscurity in the backwater village of Irrawaddy to the highest position available to a woman in the fictional Asian nation of Daway: wife of its sadistic, stupid dictator. She later becomes a political prisoner, an exile and, finally, a murderer, caught up in a whirlwind of events that leaves her alienated, rootless and reduced to an existential stupor. Relentlessly wisecracking and notably lacking in insight, Tango's first-person narration quickly wears thin; the first three quarters of the text completely fail to prepare the reader for her striking transformation into a world-weary matron at the novel's close. Although later chapters have greater focus and narrative tension, an excessive reliance on literary allusion rings false, since nothing in Tango's background suggests she would have such knowledge. Law-Yone tackles a worthy theme--the inevitable, destructive alienation felt by thoughtful Third World exiles both abroad and at home--and the novel's final section is gripping, but the bulk of it reads like a first draft. (Jan.)