HENRY OF ATLANTIC CITY

Give Reuss points for audacity. Not many writers would attempt a novel about a six-year-old boy gifted with a photographic memory, living in tawdry modern-day Atlantic City, and obsessed by the ancient sect of Gnostics. Even fewer could come so close to pulling off a novel that captures perfectly the dreams, fears, and painful confusion of a child alternately abandoned, or manipulated, by those around him and that, simultaneously, manages to be a serious—even somewhat daunting—exploration of faith and identity. Henry’s father, as the story opens, is the head of security at a casino. He’s powerful, charming, and distant. Henry, lonely and possibly a genius, is introduced to the Gnostics by a bright, mysterious blackjack dealer; having learned to read very early, Henry quickly absorbs the cryptic sayings of that extinct religious sect. Meanwhile, his father disappears, leaving him with some uncongenial guardians, where he comes into contact first with a Catholic priest, both baffled and intrigued by Henry’s habit of spouting Gnostic scripture. Henry runs away, is briefly reunited with his father (who, it turns out, has bilked the casino of several million and is on the run), and then ends up in a Catholic orphanage. Reuss (the equally idiosyncratic Horace Afoot, 1997) is a master at making the odd not only believable but also compelling. Gradually, Henry’s strange state, which mingles esoteric knowledge with the innocence of a young child confounded by life, becomes deeply affecting as well. Often as gripping are the theological arguments that thread throughout here, and Henry’s precocious struggle to reason out how one is meant to live in a world as violent, surprising, and various as this one. At times the theology comes close to capsizing the plot, and an attempt by a psychiatrist to explain the origins of Henry’s unique state is unpersuasive. Nonetheless, this ambitious fiction—blending a child’s search for love and certainty with a restless examination of the nature of faith—is often profoundly moving. It is also further evidence that Reuss is one of our most unpredictable and original novelists.