Saint John of the Five Boroughs

Family turmoil, existential crisis and artistic yearnings fill this wide-ranging but slow-moving novel. Avery Walker is a college senior when she meets Grant Danko (Saint John), a 37-year-old struggling artist who persuades her to ditch school and come live with him in Brooklyn. But Grant's career is off track since a violent episode left him unable to write, and as Avery falls in with his successful friends, Grant turns to a nefarious uncle and an unlikely involvement with the mob. Meanwhile, Avery's widowed mother, Kate, enlists her brother-in-law Hank (who harbors feelings for Kate) and his wife, Lindsay (whose brother is in Iraq), to leave Virginia and accompany her to rescue Avery. Falco produces some excellent writing, especially when he's exploring Grant's complicated past, but these sharp and nuanced passages unfortunately expose the other, more pedestrian sections. Avery serves as the linchpin between the two plots: the Virginians lost in New York and Grant's struggling. But except in Avery's head, these two worlds never quite become a whole. (Oct.)