The Multiple Child

In this simpering allegory, a child from Beirut goes to live in Paris with relatives after his parents are killed by the same bomb attack that tore off one of his arms. At first, poor little Omar-Jo repels his cousin Rosie and her husband Antoine. ``The sight of that mutilated, incongruous thing turned their stomachs.'' Besides, Rosie is too busy trying to win her husband back from his mistress to deal with Omar-Jo. Twelve-year-old Omar-Jo quickly ingratiates himself with Maxime, a disillusioned merry-go-round owner, and he soon draws a crowd with such revolutionary marketing ideas as putting up posters. Omar-Jo plays to the crowd, drawing them in and then revealing his stump and his story but descriptions of these performances are vaguely worded (``Led by his voice, Omar-Jo evokes his city, left so recently.''). Flashbacks describe Omar-Jo's family: his crusty grandfather who carried great guilt about an extramarital affair; his mother, who worked as a maid for a slatternly woman; and his father, a chauffeur his mother met in Cairo. None of these characters are believable as anything other than as representations of faults or virtues, and Omar-Jo is a particularly annoying personification of the all-knowing and angelic child. Chedid (From Sleep Unbound) does best when she sticks to a simple style, but attempts at poetic description tend to fall flat. (Sept.)