BEAUTIFUL SOMEWHERE ELSE

Alien abductions and a magician's vanishing acts figure as heavy-handed metaphors for the desire to escape from oneself in this first novel. Paul Brickner, 38, and his much younger girlfriend, Nadia, retreat to Cape Cod, where they hope to forget the wounds of Paul's two failed marriages and Nadia's obsessed ex-boyfriend, Fred. No such luck. Fred shows up almost immediately, raving of "lights" and "the Others," stories that are eerily familiar to Paul. Paul's drug-and-therapy-addled aging rocker friend, Tommy, and Nadia's angry girlfriend, Jennifer, also crash the couple's vacation. Soon everyone's psychological issues dominate the story: Tommy's oppressive father, Nadia's absent one, Jennifer's sexual neediness, Fred's fixation on Nadia, and above all, Paul's relentless guilt over deserting his second wife after a traumatic miscarriage. When a hurricane and its attendant chaos descend on the Cape and Tommy disappears, Paul loses himself in a psychedelic dream world, pursuing his friend, the visions of the Lights and an escape from his tortured memories. Paul is researching the escape artist Sung Soo, and allusions to this contemporary of Houdini who mysteriously disappeared punctuate the narrative. (Sung Soo also may have witnessed the same "lights" and "Others" as did Fred, Paul and Tommy.) Policoff sets up an unsubtle parallel between Sung Soo and Paul's vanishing acts, and both characters' stories come to abrupt, rather bewildering endings. Though a few affecting moments enliven the novel, a repetitive emphasis on obvious emotional scars and on UFO-like signs and omens renders the book too melodramatic. Agent, Jack Scovil . (May)