Strange Skies

July 9, 2007
In Marinovich’s artful debut, married, childless Paul Mauro, 38, checks in with his doctor after a lump of cancer is removed from his bicep. He gets a clean bill of health and immediately starts dreading his life to come, which includes impregnating his wife, Lee. On the way out of the doctor’s office he meets a beautiful woman, Alex, who has just been diagnosed with cancer. She assumes he’s in the same boat, and Paul decides to play along. Paul, who narrates with a gallows humor, lies to Lee, too, about his condition and propels himself into a parallel fake-cancer world where women suddenly find him irresistibly brave. Paul’s an unusally self-aware scoundrel, and his adventures, including his dread of fatherhood, are very funny in spots. The ending doesn’t quite work, but readerly goodwill built up in the defter sequences compensates.