Muriel Spark, a prolific Scottish writer, critic and satirist, is probably best-known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), a controversial novel which also became an acclaimed film. Spark’s fiction is characterized by the use of certain techniques which give her often short novels a feeling of complexity and depth. Her new novel, Aiding and Abetting, is true to form short in length and long on style. In this quirky tale of murder, blackmail and false identities, Spark widens the book’s scope by using an omniscient third-person narrator and unexpected time and place shifts. These techniques, coupled with her witty, understated way of revealing unusual events, makes Aiding and Abetting a delightfully strange and surprising tale. The inspiring “spark” for this story was a real-life upper-class crime story that caused a sensation in the British press. As Spark tells us in her opening Note to Readers, the real-life seventh Earl of Lucan disappeared in 1974 when he fled from charges of murder (oops he killed his children’s nanny by mistake, thinking she was his wife) and attempted murder (oops again he tried once more to kill his wife but she survived his attack). Aiding and Abetting is a fiction, a fabrication of Lucan’s life on the lam more of a whimsical “where’d he go?” than a hard-boiled “whodunit.” Still, there is plenty to keep us guessing. Spark keeps the “who?” question alive throughout much of the story by having two nearly identical “Lucans” surface, each claiming to be the genuine article and each claiming patient-doctor privilege in his relationship with the psychiatrist, Hildegard Wolf, an alluring, enigmatic, former fake stigmatic from Bavaria. These three less-than-honorable characters play cat and mouse games from start to finish. In the hands of a less-venturous novelist, they would probably provide enough entertaining, problematic entanglements by themselves, but Spark (now in her 80s) is not one to shy from a twist or a complication she’ll throw a new character into the fray or pull one out of the past on a moment’s notice keeping your wheels spinning. Aiding and Abetting may be unconventional in structure, it may break some rules, but you will find the pages turning quickly as you try to puzzle out this Rubik’s Cube of a novel.

Linda Stankard is a writer/actor living in Middle Tennessee who has broken a few rules herself, though with less literary acclaim.

The Irish novelist John Banville has published more than a dozen books and won a number of prizes. Reviewers have begun to promote him as an inevitable member of the Irish pantheon that includes Joyce and Beckett. There is no question of Banville’s literary worth. His use of language is as lyrical and beautiful as that of any novelist writing in English today, and his plumbing of the moral confusions of humanity relentless and unblinking. But he is also simply fun to read.

Eclipse is the story of Alexander Cleave, a well-known actor who has begun to lose control of his work and his life. He does not understand what is happening to him. Despite the resistance of his wife, Cleave returns to his childhood home to rest in peace and quiet. Naturally, he finds neither. What awaits him in the family house are disturbing human beings and even more disturbing visions which may or may not be literal ghosts. Like most of Banville’s novels, Eclipse is told in first person, which permits not only a deeply personal, confessional tone, but also narrative options unavailable to the assumed truthfulness of sober third person. A narrator may misinterpret impressions or events, misremember the past, even fictionalize out of confusion or a deliberate attempt to mislead.

As he struggles to figure out what has happened to his life, Alexander Cleave reveals his momentary misperceptions, his history of emotional disconnection, even his erotic dreams. In his intimate way long on thought and short on dialogue Banville paints a picture of the interior life of a man who has always been acting, always presenting one version of himself to the world without even realizing the extent to which the true Alexander Cleave was locked somewhere within.

Cleave’s narration veers toward and away from his theme. "See how I parry and duck, like an outclassed boxer?" he asks the reader. "I begin to speak of my ancestral home and within a sentence or two I have moved next door. That is me all over." Like all of Banville’s narrators, Cleave learns about himself through thinking aloud. Fortunately he is a John Banville creation, and every word is worth listening to.

Michael Sims is the author of Darwin’s Orchestra (Henry Holt) and Adam’s Navel (Viking).

Just when you thought there was nothing new under the sun, and that we were stuck with the same 10 or so storylines for the rest of eternity, a book like Kinship Theory comes along. Exploiting 21st century advancements in medical technology, novelist Hester Kaplan has invented a new plot twist that would have surprised even Ecclesiastes. In Kaplan’s novel, protagonist Maggie Crown, 48, bears a child for her infertile daughter. Kinship Theory is no Steel Magnolias, however, no story of unfaltering love and devotion between mother and daughter. Maggie is a reluctant heroine with few traditional womanly virtues. She resents her daughter’s emotional dependency. She sleeps with men she doesn’t really like. She neglects to make vital repairs on her house. On some subconscious level, she demands payment for the gift she gives her daughter. The karmic debt she exacts threatens to ruin almost everyone close to her.

Yet Maggie is well aware of her flaws, especially as a mother, and that self awareness is what makes the novel interesting.

Maggie’s dysfunctional family isn’t the only one under the microscope in Kaplan’s novel. Her daughter, Dale, must decide whether to forgive her husband’s infidelity, committed while Maggie was bearing their child. Maggie’s boss and former lover, Ben, is wed to a nagging wife with whom he shares an embittered son, dying of AIDS. Kaplan successfully explores the underbelly of relationships that, to outside observers, may seem charmed. In this way, she carries on the Cheever tradition of exposing suburbia’s hidden desperation.

Some readers may relate to Maggie’s essential aloneness at the middle of life. Divorced from her husband, she provides emotional support to her daughter on demand, but receives little support in return. Her mother, Virginia, has cut all but the most formal ties to Maggie, in favor of an idyllic life in Florida with her second husband. Her solitude is problematic, but it is also clearly her choice. Many readers, disappointed with other literary depictions of middle-aged women on their own, will like Maggie. While she is no Pollyanna, nor even a Dr. Quinn, she is not needy or desperate or unfulfilled by her career. Like many 21st century women, she is blessed with excellent health and enough energy to do whatever she wants when she finally decides what that is.

The character of Maggie Crown represents both an impressive accomplish for Hester Kaplan and a challenge for future writers hoping to capture the psychology of the single woman at midlife.

Lynn Hamilton writes from Tybee Island, Georgia.

When Steve Martin hosts the 72nd Academy Awards on March 25, millions of viewers will see the brilliant comic they know and adore. What many fans may not know is that the zany actor also has surprising talents as an author.

Movie-goers have come to expect a vast emotional range from Martin due to his many film roles. Add to this his two hilarious books, Pure Drivel and Cruel Shoes; several screenplays; the off-Broadway hit Picasso at the Lapin Agile; regular contributions to The New Yorker and The New York Times, and his range looks all the more impressive. Martin has an astonishingly different kind of treat in store for his fans with Shopgirl, his recent novella. Readers expecting zany riffs and hilariously skewed observations will be shocked to find his first work of fiction a serious, intimate, rather dark comedy of manners. Mirabelle, the shopgirl who works in the glove department at Neiman Marcus, is a ripening plum of a woman trying to thrive where there is no market for her kind (a mirabelle is a superb French plum). Depression and a natural shyness make socializing difficult, and her intelligence, warmth and beauty are gifts others do not give the time or effort to discover. Her desperate loneliness drives her into the uncertain arms of Jeremy, an inexperienced young boy she meets in a laundromat and plans to seduce solely for the chance of an "afterglow" cuddle. Then appears millionaire Ray Porter, a suitor at the opposite end of the socio-economic and age spectrums, and Mirabelle embarks on her first bona fide adult love affair.

No longer married, Ray begins his dalliance with the intoxicating Mirabelle without the distraction of commitment or obligation. Mirabelle, Ray and even poor Jeremy eventually discover, in their own time and way, that we cannot truly love others when we don’t know ourselves. Laugh-out-loud humorous Shopgirl is not, although there are comic touches, especially those involving Mirabelle’s rival, a co-worker whose single desire is to be desired by all men. A sweet, courageous exploration of a young woman’s search for selfhood and love, Shopgirl promises to leave readers eager for the next literary surprise from Steve Martin.

Born and raised in Houston, Texas, outdoor/conservation writer Rick Bass attended Utah State University to study wildlife management but later switched to petroleum engineering because it seemed more practical. That did not last. His connection to nature and his desire to be in it caused him to hop into a pick-up truck with his wife one day and just start driving, not knowing where they would end up. Their search led them to the Yaak Valley in northern Montana where Bass now lives and works. This valley formed the foundation for the stories that unfold in his beautiful first novel, Where the Sea Used to Be.

Where the Sea Used to Be is, first and foremost, a character study. It does not thrust you immediately into a tightly wound plot, but instead slowly reveals the many layers of the main characters. This is the story of a clash of wills the story of the struggle between a father and daughter, and two men: his proteges, her lovers. Old Dudley is a wildly successful oil prospector with a system. He delights in taking a raw, young geologist and breaking him, eventually molding him to his will and in the process invariably crushing him. Matthew represents one of his greatest successes, having found innumerable oil fields, but he is nearly broken, approaching the end of his usefulness. He is also the somewhat estranged lover of Old Dudley’s daughter, Mel. Wallis is Dudley’s newest project. After putting Wallis to work with Matthew in Houston, Old Dudley sends him North, to a remote and isolated valley in Montana the same valley where Mel lives and studies wolves.

What follows is a gradual unveiling of life in the valley. Each chapter contains separate vignettes of the valley’s way of life, held together by a peaceful narrative. Bass’s descriptions of the valley illustrate the intertwined nature of humans and their surroundings, as well as the struggle between nature and intrusion of humankind. His writing, like that of Thoreau or Aldo Leopold, is the voice of someone who is at peace with the world in which he lives. He does not write about nature so much as feels it, and the most beautiful part of the book is that he is able to convey to the reader that sense of understanding, of awe and wonder. Where the Sea Used to Be is a serene and languid book. It does not urge you to finish, but rather to enjoy the experience, to savor the descriptions and to become one with the valley and its people. Reading Where the Sea Used to Be is like taking a slow hike through the hills, or canoeing down a lazy river. In no rush to get anywhere, you are able to enjoy the sights, the sounds, the smells. Bass reminds us that we should do this more often, and after reading the Where the Sea Used to Be, you will most likely agree.

Reviewed by Wes Breazeale.