Lazy Eye

Curling backward and forward in time, Daley-Clarke's debut is less a beginning-to-end novel than an incisive set of related character studies that fugue around a tragedy. The novel's decisive moment takes place during the miserable London summer of 1976, when temperatures reach record highs, and the family of 10-year-old Geoffhurst Johnson splits apart in sudden, tragic fashion. Geoffhurst's father, a West Indian-born soccer player named Sonny, commits an out-of-character crime, leaving Geoffhurst and his sister, Susie, in the care of their aunt Harriet: Geoffhurst and Harriet narrate, with Sonny's letters from prison filling out his perspective. As the book opens, Sonny is about to be released from prison, and a college-age Geoffhurst must push past a tabloid journalist, who offers him five figures for his story, to get into his apartment. He then proceeds to tell the story in his own elliptical way. Geoffhurst charms even when he is behaving boorishly, but even though a lot of what he remembers and talks about is quite vivid, he himself remains frustratingly opaque. Harriet, more reserved, is even less accessible. Extended digressions (British minor-league soccer, voodoo, teenage gangs) are nicely done. The whole doesn't equal the sum of its parts, but British Daley-Clarke shows a great deal of promise. (Mar.)