How Boys See Girls

Continually hung over from booze and valium, Bix, a 40-ish political speechwriter in Toronto, obsessively lusts after ``scruffy,'' ``green-eyed,'' 19-year-old Holly Briggs, who sells jewelry on commission. The latent possibilities in this plot are not fulfilled in Gilmour's ( Back on Tuesday ) disappointing second novel. Bix, the narcissistic narrator, driven mad with jealousy over Holly's lack of attention and imagined or real lovers, uses her as a projection screen; the reader never comes to know her as a real person. Bix's slightly ``bossy'' ex-wife, Margaret, a film producer, and his adolescent daughter, Zooey, are a blur. Some secondary characters spark interest, like Aunt Jane, who pushes Uncle James down the stairs to his death. Shedding light on the better book this might have been, given the author's talents, Bix's oversexed observations, expressed through often poetic monologue, evince Gilmour's fine ear for the ironies and dilemmas of man-woman combat (``This waiting for her to call . . . it was like a full-time job''). (Nov.)