Stolen Air

This Irish novel varies a shopworn theme--alienation in a technological society--in sorely overdetermined prose. Its protagonist, alternately presented in first- and third-person narration, is nameless (``Names were anchors to times and places past, and often, deliberately, he cut them adrift, and left behind all of their glories and their guilts''). When Quinn ( Voyovic, Brigitte and Other S tories ) first introduces him, he is ``the helmsman,'' a sailor who takes an unauthorized shore leave with a prostitute in the Caribbean. He next appears as an illegal immigrant in the U.S., is deported and then, working at a shelter for the homeless in London, becomes ``the Watchman.'' Quinn overcompensates for the instability of his characters' existences with turgid writing: ``Isa, daughter of Samuel, danced her life to the sounds of an unseen orchestra. . . . She was euphoric, for reasons that she did not understand, in the passing of her life.'' (Nov.)