On the Window Licks the Night: A Nivola

In a literary interview, South, an institutionalized writer, recounts his life before his breakdown. Reality is a friend South only occasionally entertains. The fulcrum of his tale is Freya, a actual woman whose imaginary doppelganger inhabits South's mind. The subject of writer-as-basketcase certainly is not new, but the comic pant of the Pushcart Prize-winning author's prose, as well as the unconventional combination of narrative and records of a literary interview with South, make this slim book worth reading. But Mitchell's writing doesn't overcome a basic difficulty: how to spin a narrative that portrays the subject's confusion about life but isn't confined by it. Scattered like land mines, hastily sketched characters appear throughout the work, often confusing the reader. Nonetheless, herein lies much evidence of a lushly spinning mind. (July)