The Song of Percival Peacock

Poet and novelist Edson ( Tick-Tock ) has a considerable cult following, but this slight novel won't add to his reputation. Presented entirely in dialogue, this work is a deadpan comic fable of inheritance, class, misunderstanding and sex. Percival Peacock has come to claim his inheritance after the death of an elder Peacock who may have been his uncle, only to find one of the family chairs missing and some of the servants extremely obstreperous. Percival is quickly inveigled into a seemingly endless series of confusions of identity and gender, and finds himself marrying a next-door neighbor in a ceremony in which the entire cast of characters--including the Captain of Police, called in regarding the missing chair--appears in white wedding gowns. Equal parts Stoppard, Rabelais and the Three Stooges, this work veers wildly between clever wordplay and pointless repetition. Too much of the first half of the book is taken up with people accusing one another of shouting while speaking at the tops of their lungs. Despite flashes of Edson's considerable wit, this obsessively scatological tale rapidly grows wearisome. (Nov.)