THE WOMAN BETWEEN THE WORLDS

Overstuffed, waggish, literary-figured Victorian fantasy on the ""Invisible Man"" theme: MacIntyre's eccentric, stimulating debut. In 1898, the young narrator, a tattoo artist, accepts an invisible woman, Vanessa Steel, as a client. Vanessa claims to be a woman from another reality, and wishes to be tattooed all over in order to render herself visible so as to be able to function in our world. As the tattooing proceeds, it becomes apparent that Vanessa is not remotely human -- she can alter her shape, for one thing. And soon the couple are beset by invisible beings intent on capturing Vanessa and returning her to her own world -- where a ghastly creature, the Dreadful Eye, now roles with his hypnotic powers; only Vanessa resists him. With help from scientist Sir William Crookes and diabolist Aleister Crowley, Vanessa and her tattooist evade the Dreadful Eye -- until at last she is grabbed. So the tattooist, aided by W.B. Yeats, G.B. Shaw, and Conan Doyle, ponders a means to recover Vanessa and defeat the Dreadful Eye. Hard-working, evocative, and suitably macabre -- but with the rather thin plot and largely superfluous literary luminaries, not altogether convincing.