Jenn McKee

"We are held together by threads of dependence," writes A. S. Byatt's protagonist, Phineas G. Nanson, in her new novel The Biographer's Tale. This idea, as it applies to the characters' interlaced lives, underscores both the structure and narrative trajectory of Byatt's spiraling plot. Phineas, a postgraduate student in England, becomes disillusioned with academic abstractions, so he decides to strike a new course. After reading a biography of Elmer Bole, Phineas refocuses his energies toward writing a biography of Bole's biographer, and his pursuit of information makes the novel resemble a set of Chinese boxes; each life that Phineas examines opens up doors to the lives of several others.

Phineas struggles at first to find any information about biographer Scholes Destry-Scholes, who seems to have left almost no trace of himself behind except two shoeboxes full of notes and photographs. Vera, Destry-Scholes' niece, keeps these boxes in her attic, and when she answers Phineas' advertisement, a strange relationship evolves between them. This is later mirrored by Phineas' other relationship with a woman Fulla, a taxonomist who initially translates and answers questions for him.

With the help of these two women, Phineas eventually pieces together a triptych of Destry-Scholes' research: before Destry-Scholes disappearance, he had been gathering information on Carl Linnaeus, the legendary taxonomist; Francis Galton, whose unfortunate contribution to science was the field of eugenics; and Henrik Ibsen, the Norwegian playwright. Phineas concludes from Destry-Scholes' notes on these figures that he had intended a project that combined the lives of all three.

In this clever but demanding novel, Byatt shows that we are not isolated individuals, but rather the sum of each others' lives. Though Phineas often protests (too much): "I am not interested in myself," The Biographer's Tale ends up being wholly about him while simultaneously focusing on others in his life and research. In the spirit of Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler, Byatt's blur of multiple biographical accounts demonstrates both our commonalities as human beings while also showing, in strong relief, how we can never truly know each other, or ourselves, with any degree of certainty.

Jenn McKee teaches at Penn State University.

A Box of Matches is both the title and central metaphor of Nicholson Baker's new novel. The narrator uses matches each morning to build a pre-dawn fire, and his small matchbox also represents the contained days of an ordinary life.

While conventional novels have a central conflict that builds to a crisis point, A Box of Matches works on a cyclical, postmodernist plane. Readers are directly greeted by the narrator's cheerful "Good morning," as well as his report of the time, in chapters that read like fireside diary entries. We hear his observations on such mundane activities as showering, washing dishes, feeding pets, watching condensation on a glass and repositioning his toes to avoid a hole in his sock. Baker renders these common tasks in beautiful and strangely heartbreaking fashion, as in this description of his son: "I gave Henry a bath, and saw all of his forehead, as you do when your child is in the bath all that high, smooth forehead, as I rinsed out the shampoo, and I pointed toward the back of the tub, meaning Look way back,' so that his head would tip back enough for me to rinse the shampoo from the hair just above his forehead, and I saw his young face, trusting me not to drip water in his eyes . . . and I thought, I've got only a few years of Henry being a small boy." In such passages, the narrator's ordinary experiences quietly echo flashier ones thus examining the relentless passage of time and the logic of the novel's cyclical form comes to light, revealing a subtle conflict, existential in its nature.

Baker's experimental approach to fiction makes A Box of Matches a challenging read despite its brevity. The author aims to make his audience experience, the very sameness of days the narrator is coming to recognize. Thus, though Baker's conflict isn't immediately apparent, it couldn't be more universal. After all, we're all going through our allotted days just as the narrator works through his box of matches with contentment, dread and resignation.

Like Abbott and Costello and Laurel and Hardy, the fat man/thin man comedy duo of Carter and Sharp featured in Elizabeth McCracken's new novel, Niagara Falls All Over Again will do anything to earn the adoration of strangers sitting in darkness.

Mose Sharp narrates the story, starting with his Iowa childhood when a mentoring older sister infects him with the vaudeville bug, while his father grooms him to take over the family menswear store. When tragic consequences force Mose to choose between his father's hopes and a life in show business, he knows that his decision to run away might appear hard-hearted. But, as Mose explains, "People who manage to turn things down, jobs and marriage and children, love and steady meals, have hearts soft as velvet, hearts . . . never meant for work."

McCracken traces Sharp's journey to stardom, including his travels as a mediocre song and dance man on the vaudeville circuit, and his work as a "disappointment act," filling in for billed performers too drunk, sick or depressed to go on stage. But soon Rocky Carter spots Mose backstage and offers him a job as his straight man. They're a modest hit, and eventually, after some radio features, they move out to Hollywood to make films.

Together, they star in low budget, quickly made, formulaic films, and they become rich. But such success, of course, takes a toll on Carter and Sharp's personal lives, including the increasingly fragile relationship and dependency they share. McCracken, who was nominated for the National Book Award for her first novel, A Giant's House, well knows that pain lies at the core of every successful joke. As this concept is central to Carter and Sharp's success, it is also integral to the atmosphere created in the novel. Her observations consistently avoid sentimentality, as when Mose feels angry about his father telling Rocky a family story that Mose never heard himself. Near the end of his life, Mose comes to understand his father's actions: "Your own children and their questions! They interrupt you. Their eyes bulge when a relative in a story behaves in a way they can't imagine (and they can't imagine much). They interrupt again, though every question they ask, every single one, is the same: How exactly has this story shaped my life?" Such passages make familiar territory lifelong self-absorption a strange, new discovery.

Only the novel's conclusion feels slightly unsatisfying, in that some questions never even get asked (let alone answered). Overall, though, tagging along with straight man Mose Sharp, from the time of vaudeville through the age of television, is flat-out fun a heartbreaking and exhilarating ride.

Jenn McKee teaches at Penn State University.