Pillow

Pillow, the unsuspecting hero of Battershill's unusual debut novel, is a former boxer with a love of animals and the zoo. He makes ends meet as a low-level thug in a criminal syndicate run by, of all people, Andr%C3%A9 Breton, the founder of Surrealism. After Pillow's would-be girlfriend Emily reveals she's pregnant and an antique coin heist goes wrong, the enforcer conceives of a plan to find and flip the coins under Breton's nose%E2%80%94one final score before getting free of the organization. But Breton is extremely clever, and his gang, consisting of luminaries such as Louis Aragon and Georges Bataille, aren't to be trifled with either. Pillow is no fool, but he is linear, putting him at a distinct disadvantage when confronted with surrealist thinking. He serves the audience surrogate, swimming through a sea of abstraction in an otherwise stolid genre. The dichotomy between Pillow and Breton is brought to the fore via Battershill's surefooted, diamond-sharp writing. The author's use of metaphor and imagery is exquisite; he plays with surrealism with such a light step so as to appear effortless%E2%80%94as if it were an entirely common extension of hardboiled crime fiction. This debut is accomplished and highly entertaining. (Nov.)