Krippendorf's Tribe

To qualify for a research grant (to pay for his Volvo, his daughter's voice lessons and a vacation), house-husband and anthropologist manque James Krippendorf invents an Amazonian tribe, the Shelmikedmu, whose name and behavioral traits are inspired by his somewhat savage children, Shelley, Mickey and Edmund. He writes several well-received tracts on the ""tribe'' and publishes lurid photos of the children, their babysitter, and the mother of one of their schoolmates in Exotica, a soft-porn magazine formerly known as the British Journal of Structural Anthropology. Krippendorf's fantasy tribe and reality soon merge beyond recognition, as he and his offspring dine on the remains of their dead nanny and celebrate in ritual Shelley's first menstruation. The domestic and academic spoofery in this unsettling black comedy are a bit facile, but Parkin eventually persuades the reader fully of Krippendorf's mania, and the laughter it inspires partially redeems the more grotesque and tasteless aspects of the story.January 24