"In fact, one does not really need a story so much these days. Every story hangs on the thread, hitches a ride on the hips of all the stories that have come before." With that bon mot, Labiner (Our Sometime Sister) introduces her outrageous second novel, a freewheeling, over-the-top tribute to the prose styles of such literary giants as the Brontë sisters, Proust and Mary Shelley. Labiner's heroine is the precociously intelligent Fern Jacobi, who interrupts her after-college travels in Ireland to work as a housekeeper for a pair of odd writers, Owen and Brigid Lieb. Owen is the more experienced and successful of the two, but his track record with women is a bit shabby—his first wife, Franny, committed suicide despite a successful literary career of her own, and Brigid soon forms an alliance with Jacobi when she feels pressured to come up with her own inaugural writing project. The rather threadbare plot is largely an excuse for Labiner to trot out her main calling card, a brilliantly literate and wildly digressive style full of literary allusions, historical references and clever observations on pop culture. Most of these passages are thought provoking and entertaining, but Labiner does include plenty of overly cute and self-indulgent stretches, along with some conceits that simply don't work. She makes up for her shortcomings, however, by taking readers on a roller-coaster ride through the world of writers, culture, history and literature that is always intriguing and often compelling. (Sept.)
