The Book of Candy

At first blush a conventional feminist tale about a short, plump, suburban Long Island Jewish housewife who overcomes self-hatred and chucks off her philandering husband, Dworkin's novel is more than funny enough to spice up its comfort-food themes of self-esteem and self-discovery. Candy Shapiro, 35-year-old mother of two, discovers that her workaholic, condescending, ""fascistically clean"" husband, Martin, a gynecologist and surgeon, has been constantly unfaithful. She veers from castrating revenge fantasies to masochistic self-blame, turning ultimately to longtime family friend Orpheo Pastafino, an Atlantic city mobster. Dworkin, author of the novel Stolen Goods and the novelization of Desperately Seeking Susan, lets loose a colorful cast propelled by oddball characters: Abe Heimlich, an ex-rabbi turned comedian, is given to oracular prophecies during trance-like states; flamboyant black blues singer Alisette Legrand has a predilection for white men in general and for Abe in particular. Candy has an affair with a poor, ambitious, Israeli moving-man, and she assists the campaign of a rich, chic environmentalist would-be congresswoman. The action is as over-the-top as the characters: a terrorist bomb explodes in Jerusalem; Candy's draft-dodger brother Alex is haunted by the ghost of their sibling, a doctor killed in Cambodia; a tsunami rocks the boardwalk. Eventually, however, Dworkin's tone fails her: although she appears to be aiming for wicked satire, the narrative becomes more of a manic cartoon for grown-ups. (Oct.)