Dreams of Molly

At the beginning of Baumbach's (You: Or the Invention of Memory) latest meta-fiction, Jack is "in Italy sitting at my desk in a luxuriant villa writing the story of my invented life." Wait, no, he's "in bed in Brooklyn dreaming I was in Italy at the Villa Mondare...writing the first sentence of my fictional memoir." Thus begins a romp through his dreams from night 25 to night 101. Jack's quest is to find Molly, his ex-wife, whom he treated badly, but she proves maddeningly elusive. Just when he thinks he's found her again (living with another man), she's kidnapped and develops a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome. At the novel's core is Jack's disappointment and bewilderment at his relentless failure in affairs of the heart; as he tells a bear who follows him when he flees his latest lover, that after losing Molly he "found it difficult to respond to other women." The bear acknowledges the mournful remark "with an occasional grunt," which is telling, as the reader ends up involved in Jack's exploits about as deeply as does the bear; this is a disappointingly facile work from a writer who's been with us for 40 years. (May)