Spinners

In this sprightly, quirky novel about contemporary small-town New Zealand, teenage meat packer Delia Chapman's claim that she has encountered a group of aliens is at first considered temporary insanity because of the stresses of her job. For how else can her story, which gains her instant tabloid fame and the envy of her catty friends, be explained? Things get stranger when Delia realizes she's pregnant, but remembers little more of her extranatural experience than lights and noise. When two of Delia's friends also disclose their pregnancies and likewise blame the spacemen, the town of Opunake begins to buzz with reporters. Delia's problems are compounded by the facts of her life on earth: an abusive father, a mother lost to suicide, an incompetent mechanic boyfriend. Philip Sullivan, the town's new librarian and the book's unlikely hero, is a quiet intellectual with a temper that's recently earned him a dishonorable discharge from the army. McCarten, a well-known New Zealand playwright, filmmaker and short story writer, adeptly describes the snowballing effects of national publicity and town gossip. His fresh dialogue and keen, devilish sense of humor make the facile resolution this novel's only disappointing moment. Author tour. (Feb.)