Unbabbling

Less a single novel than three tenuously linked novellas, Reyoung's pretentious fiction debut follows a single hero through three incarnations, first as a construction worker and veteran, then as a homeless man and, finally, as a gnome making his way through the subterranean sewers and subways of an anonymous city. In part one, the least incoherent of the three, drunken hard-hat narrator Harry gets picked up by a painter named Cassa (""I saw you when you came in. You looked like a monster. I like monsters""), who takes him home and introduces him to her effeminate artist friends. They promptly lionize the effortlessly virile vet, while Cassa's powerful father gets him a cushy corporate job. Predictably, Harry rebels against his sinecure--""I realized it made me a target, an enemy of my own people, the people I used to live among""--and must find himself amid the demons of his past. The other two tales (which never begin to pay off their deep debt to Beckett's Malloy trilogy) founder in stream-of-consciousness narcissism, antiestablishment rants and callow philosophical asides. Throughout, Reyoung tries too hard for sweeping significance (his introduction explains that in ""the overarching structure of the book, the chimerical dance of the universe, end is always beginning"") without the meat-and-potatoes specifics (place, characters, situations) needed to support even the headiest works of fiction (Nov.)