The Discreet Pleasures of Rejection

Lots of girls have dumped Virgil, a 31-year-old advertising copywriter who lives in a Parisian apartment building occupied primarily by prostitutes, but only one, Clara, has dared to do so before she even dated him. Virgil can't remember meeting Clara, the woman who leaves a message on his answering machine that ends their imaginary relationship and sends Virgil on an emotional and sometimes existential journey that prompts him at one point to conclude, in the great absurdist tradition, that he “understood Clara's decision.” Although the story's central conceit provides a vehicle by which Virgil can explore the realms of failed relationships, identity, imagination, and invention, his aimless wanderings through a Paris inhabited by mere shades of fully fleshed characters, and his unearned shifts in outlook, suggest that the strengths of this sometimes funny and insightful tale would be better demonstrated in the tighter confines of a short story. (Feb.)