Museum of Happiness

Kercheval's ( The Dogeater ) first novel moves, rather like a warmer-hearted version of an Almodovar movie, through the ups and downs of two people of passion: Ginny Gillespie, a 20-year-old American widow feeling her oats in Paris of 1929, and Roland Keppi, an Alsatian-German victim of misfortune trying, like Ginny, to fit together the stray pieces of his identity. They meet by chance in the capital city; fall in love; survive a very trying separation; and are reunited magically and marvelously. But to say so doesn't describe the brisk, fanciful aplomb of the writing, which takes us on an adventure full of trans-Atlantic incongruities without getting lost. Kercheval's talents are many--a delicate sense of the visual; robustly realistic dialogue; a tragic and comic imagination--but the most impressive may be her narrative balance, sustained throughout many diversions in the plot. Her balance is thematic, too, gathering together distinctly different elements: the personal and the political, wit and earnestness, the force of death and that of life. Her cinematic brio in constructing scenes could be the envy of a filmmaker; her appreciation of character is deep, large, sharp. (Nov.)