Two Halves of New Haven

This dextrous but ultimately uneven and superficial first novel offers an inside look at the Yale Medical School, from the point of view of a disaffected first-year student, Paul Levinson. As the term starts he is awed by Yale and all that it signifies. Simultaneous to Paul's confrontation with his first cadaver we read his exploration of his own inner workings and heretofore unacknowledged homosexuality. As he pursues gay experiences and embraces a gay identity, he renounces his goal of becoming a doctor in the Ivy League medical establishment and discovers that working as a bartender and making videos allows him to stop feeling like an imposter. An incident early in the story--the unmasking of a fellow student who turns out to have a history of fraudulent identities--serves as Paul's point of reference as he searches for self-knowledge and acceptance. Schecter, a science writer who attended Yale Medical School, has written a funny and sympathetic New Age bildungsroman . But it misses the mark; the author's concerns are too personal, too specific, and the story is less authentic in background, setting and atmosphere than it purports to be. (June)