The Infinite Now

Tarquini (Hindsight) attempts to evoke the horrors of the 1918 flu epidemic in this incoherent fantasy novel set in an Italian neighborhood in Philadelphia. Fiora Vicente loses both parents to the flu while her brothers are fighting in Europe; from her mother, a fortune teller, she inherits a window curtain that can predict or possibly manipulate the future. Fiora tries to use the curtain to do things like keeping her elderly guardian from having a heart attack, but its magic resists her, and the guaritrice, the local folk healer from their village back in Italy, does nasty things like charming away Fiora’s memories with herbs snuck into her tea. The neighborhood and time period are worth exploring, and the looming shadows of the war and the flu make some impression, but Fiora’s motivations, goals, and general character are not drawn well enough for the emotional arc of the book to make any sense. The plot flounders because the few character motivations that are comprehensible are clichéd, such as the way circumstances keep throwing Fiora together with an obvious love interest, and readers never understand enough about the way the curtain interacts with time to warrant the emotional weight the book places on it. (Oct.)