This second novel by Siegel (Love in a Dead Language) lives up to its subtitle: it's organized as a game of Snakes and Ladders, with each chapter representing a square on the game board; the reader can choose between a traditional reading, from start to finish, and a playful one, letting the roll of the dice decide. The story follows Isaac Schlossberg, a swindler, circus performer and entertainer. As Schlossberg travels around the world (and across the board), his stunts—from childhood appearances in sideshow acts with his Jewish immigrant parents at the turn of the century to his attempts to beat Sir Edmund Hillary to the top of Mount Everest—are woven together into one exceptionally tall tale. Depending on one's point of view, this is either the book's failing or its forte: the reader hardly has time to take in Schlossberg's romance with a Hindu snake charmer, for example, before he flies off to a different corner of the earth, a different occupation and a different woman. At the beginning and end of the novel are somewhat more grounded first-person accounts by a writer called Lee Siegel, Schlossberg's estranged son, who explains that "a person's lies always reveal some truth about them." The whole enterprise is finally redeemed by Siegel's amusing deadpan style: "The end of the war was... a blow to my father.... without a government paycheck... my father had to take agricultural work, using [his plane] to spray citrus groves with a poison that, developed for use on German infantrymen, proved lethal to American fruit flies." (Feb. 10)
Forecast:
Love in a Dead Language was also an offbeat book that received favorable reviews but didn't establish Siegel's name. He may attract a cult following with this second wildly comic novel.
