B

January 1, 2002
"How many men could boast that they had married three different female versions of their father?" wonders the eponymous B, the failed memoirist at the center of this new novel by Jonathan Baumbach (Reruns). B has three wives, four children and several books to his credit, but what should be a rich and eventful life fails to crystallize on the page-and as he relates his romantic and literary misadventures, attempting to shape them into a story, the line between fiction and autobiography becomes only more hazy. There are shades of Bellow and Roth in the themes and metafictional conceit of this sly, diverting read.