BEAUTIFUL SOMEWHERE ELSE

Weird stuff disrupts a Cape Cod vacation.

This is a first novel about Nadia and Paul and Annie and Fred and Jennifer and Tommy and Bob. They’re all human except for Bob, who’s a hurricane. Nadia and Paul are in a relationship. Nadia is 23 and cool. Paul is 38 and not so cool; he’s tickled pink, however, that Nadia fancies him. Paul has an ex called Annie. They had a baby that died from a hole in its heart; Paul still feels terrible that he wasn’t there for Annie. Nadia has an ex, too. His name is Fred, and he keeps showing up as if he wasn’t an ex at all. Fred babbles about the Lights and claims to have been abducted by aliens. This is a ploy to get Nadia’s attention. He tracks her down to the cottage on the Cape where she is vacationing with Paul. Tommy and Jennifer are their houseguests. Jennifer, Nadia’s friend, hates her own multiply-pierced body. Tommy is Paul’s oldest friend, a pill-popping manic-depressive hounded by his angry dead father. Tommy’s release is writing songs, just as Paul’s release is writing about a fake Chinese escape artist, Sung Soo. Oh, yes, Tommy sees Lights, too. Last to join the party is Hurricane Bob. He huffs and puffs and—his true function—plugs the plot hole. Nadia catches Fred and Jennifer doing the nasty. She freaks out and disappears. They all end up in a rundown inn with a bunch of UFO seekers that the hurricane has brought out of the woodwork. Paul tells Tommy about his failure to comfort Annie. He weeps, and Tommy weeps, and Fred weeps, too. Next thing you know Tommy is dead from a cerebral hemorrhage. The hurricane moves on. So do Fred and Jennifer. Nadia and Paul are alone. Nadia announces she’s pregnant. Uh-oh.

Enough psychic pain to sink a cruise ship, but not much else.