ON A DARK NIGHT

What begins, in this slam-bang third novel, as a rather simpleminded love affair, proceeds through several violent changes of pace into a dark, complex, moody five-way tragedy. Kaz, a model, student, and Catholic, is left at the altar by young Roman and immediately marries aged Professor Borzoi. Roman retreats to a onastery, but returns and the Kaz-Roman affair resumes. Her respected professor ets himself be seduced by the janitress and her Arab husband, an ex-concentration amp couple, and is ruined. The Arab rapes Kaz, who becomes pregnant, and he commits suicide. The professor kills Kaz, the janitress and her child, and himself. Roman returns to the monastery. This lurid tale is, nevertheless, well-told, at a hurtling pace full of shocks, grim scenes, and offbeat wildly articulate monologues about God, guilt, love, and the fatal progressive destructiveness of a fall from grace. Its author teaches English and is far more in control than the progression of events might indicate.