Mawrdew Czgowchwz (pronounced “Mardu Gorgeous”)—the diva heroine of McCourt's classic, recently reissued opera novel of the same name—is back in a brilliant form in this sequel, which resurrects the literary, musical and gay scene of 1950s New York. About half relates to Czgowchwz's 1956 trip across the Atlantic on the Queen Mary
with her “consort,” Jacob Beltane, to Ireland, where she is to star in Pilgrim Soul
, a Douglas Sirk–like movie about the Irish revolt of 1916. Much of the rest relates to the Gotham-centered peregrinations of Mawrdew's friend, the gay poet S.D.J. Fitzjames O'Maurigan. Their two stories are seen from the vantage point of Bloomsday, June 16, 2004, by O'Maurigan and Czgowchwz in late life. McCourt employs a brilliantly campy style as they recreate New York at its Cold War cultural apogee. The most stylistically astonishing chapters are intermezzos of conversation caught on the wing at Everard's Bath house, the book's pre-Stonewall place to meet and greet in gay New York. Characters sometimes talk too much, and the narrative feels willfully confusing at points. But readers should persevere: this novel is an astonishing piece of modernist legerdemain. (Oct.)
