British writer Gowers follows her nonfiction work on Victorian criminals, The Swamp of Death
, with a fictive weeklong journey inside the head of Ramble, a London woman quietly going crazy. Handicapped, partially deaf Ramble provides first-person narration that careens from her thoughts on photocopying pound notes to her grandmother's childhood to 1840s Stamp Office clerks with barely a breath. When husband Con calls her an “autistic vampire” and takes off with the petty criminal living downstairs, Ramble comes unglued, and the narrative goes along with her: “Remedial wise, give HER! The short shrift treatment NOW! And in a few days hence you will be beholding to no one: a law unto yourself. Oh yes!” While several quirky characters — particularly Stella, Ramble's dementia-suffering grandmother, and Johnson Pike, her childhood friend—are well imagined, Ramble's voice isn't enough to hold the book together as she flies apart. (Oct.)
