Seven Types of Ambiguity

October 4, 2004
By copping the title of William Empson's classic of literary criticism, Australian writer Perlman (Three Dollars
) sets a high bar for himself, but he justifies his theft with a relentlessly driven story, told from seven perspectives, about the effects of the brief abduction of six-year-old Sam Geraghty by Simon Heywood, his mother Anna's ex-boyfriend. Charismatic, unemployed Simon is still obsessed with Anna nine years after their breakup—to the dismay of his present lover, Angelique, a prostitute. Anna's stockbroker husband, Joe, is one of Angelique's regulars, which feeds Simon's flame. When Angelique turns Simon in to the cops, he claims he had permission to pick Sam up; his fate hinges on whether Anna will back up his lie. Most of the perspectives are linked to Simon's shrink, Alex Klima, who writes to Anna and counsels Simon, Angelique and Joe's co-worker, Dennis. The most successful voices belong to Joe, who's spent his career on the edge of panic, and Dennis, whose bitter rants provide a corrective to Klima's unctuous psychological omniscience. Perlman, a lawyer, aims for a literary legal novel—think Grisham by way of Franzen—and the ambition is admirable though the product somewhat uneven. Simon's obsessions, his self-righteousness and his psychological blackmail, give him a perhaps unintended creepiness, and the novel, as big and juicy as it is, may not offer sufficient closure. Agent, Sarah Chalfant.

September 1, 2004
Seven parts. Six narrators. And one rich and complex novel about an unemployed schoolteacher's saga of love, therapy, and loss. Perlman has won awards in his native Australia. Comparisons to Roth and Franzen suggest great expectations.

Copyright 2004 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 1, 2004
Australian novelist and barrister Perlman borrowed the title of this lengthy but fast-moving, reflective yet suspenseful novel from a book by the poet/critic William Empson, and both ambiguity and poetry shape this harrowing tale. Simon is the catalyst, a well-read and oddly charismatic laid-off grade-school teacher whose depression cues readers to Perlman's low-key but palpable indictment of a money-mad, morally bankrupt society. His obsession with Anna, the lost love of his life (her long-concealed reason for leaving him involves one of the book's many disturbing sexual encounters), sets in motion a series of unintended and unforeseen crises involving everything from insider stock tips to SIDS to prison violence. Drawn into the matrix of suffering is Anna herself; her stockbroker husband, Joe; their young son; as well as Angela, the most unlikely of good-hearted prostitutes; Alex, a compassionate but not always professional psychiatrist; and Mitch, Joe's richest client. Perlman succeeds in illuminating the ambiguity inherent in lust, personal relationships, psychiatry, and the law by having each of his afflicted characters recount his or her version of the confounding betrayals, rapes, maladies, accidents, desperate measures, courtroom machinations, and deaths that transpire over the course of this smart and edgy novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)