HONEY ON THE MOON

A slender but sometimes screaming spoof on the New Wave films, the anti-novel, and those drugstore bestsellers of purple passions. Or so it seems to us. Maude Hutchins' narrator- a bonbon of a girl, slightly twenty and slightly batty- telegraphs her tale in speedy, never-quite-straight scintillations. She's called Sigourney and it's her honeymoon. Her handsome husband, hitting forty, is all mystery and moods. Does he love her? Or does he love pretty Peter? (Sigourney resembles Peter.) Or does he love Peter's mother? And what about the dead Allyn, that figure of Sigourney's past? And all those fruity friends? And what about the gun? That gun the narrator and Allyn keep handling and misfiring? Who's killing whom? God knows! The heroine keeps licking at her problems as if they were all lollipops. Where the appearance and where the reality? Everything shifts, everything slides into focus and out of focus. And the repeated descriptions, the light and the heavy talks and twists... Well, so long as it seams satire, the somersaulting exercise is deft. But there are those moments when Miss Hutchins attempts fancier fish to fry, Deep Meanings to convey. Then it becomes a bore. The title is tops: Honey on the Moon. One better: Creeps Suzette.