THE ANTARCTICA COOKBOOK

Yet another cutesy-poo black comedy padded out with recipes--which do help to distract from first-novelist Kitto's dated, adolescent blend of sex, drugs, mysticism, and static silliness. In L.A. (where else?), stoned-out Guy Anjuna Proudlink is married to English-born ""Jewess"" Rebecca, who's into tap dancing and the Japanese Art of Vanishing; but they live apart (largely because their weird little daughter Arietta hates Guy)--so Guy is sleeping with Joanie, ex-girlfriend of his best friend William. . . who masturbates in fury. (""His sperm was white crystals showering through space and over the planet Earth, purifying the inhabitants thereon."") Eventually, however, William, Guy, and Rebecca will team up to run a smash-hit restaurant--until Rebecca is killed (pushed off a building by Joanie); William, who's now shacked up with Indian lass Krishnini, is also killed (police brutality during a whoring/doping expedition). And finally Guy inherits a fabulous fortune, making it possible to realize his dream of living--with Arietta--in the Antarctic. Complete with comic-book names, cocaine-snorting homosexuals, repartee manquÉ (""I am so serious that I make terminal cancer look like a pimple""), and mannered authorial asides about how things are going in his story: an effortfully hip, vaguely pretentious, distinctly unappetizing non-novel.