CHAMELEON

This free-floating fantasy, with very modern accessories, is strung on the notion that Chamil Descartes, a rather permanently unattached young man, now finds that he can usurp other identities. It's an attractive idea, even though Gathorne-Hardy doesn't know quite what to do with it--certainly not at book length. As for Chamil, who has these spells, he becomes his cousin James (a rather sterile sort who does research on bats), his psychiatrist, Johannson, a narcissistic young woman, a publisher, and others. While Chamil disintegrates--so does the story, although Mr. Gathorne-Hardy writes quite well and annotates his characters and the contemporary scene with a certain sophisticated shrewdness.