IN THE KINGDOM OF AIR

Part riddle, part romance, part savage indictment of the twisted morals behind Britain's middle-class conformity: a formidable, highly inventive first effort from former British editor and publisher Binding. BBC weatherman Giles Doughty, a gleefully guilt-ridden man of affairs whose weeks are measured by encounters with each of his three mistresses, experiences a midlife crisis of monumental proportion when his sister Carol calls to report the reappearance- -after decades of mystery—of Stella Muchmore. Stella, who vanished when she and Giles were teenagers, had been his partner in nightly adventure as they wandered the streets of their suburban neighborhood, wearing not a stitch and reveling in their rebelliousness; the reminder of his lost youth triggers in Giles a series of tragic recollections, exacerbated by Carol's having been struck down during a great tempest and rendered comatose, unable to provide him with further clues to Stella's whereabouts. Rebuffed by his lovers and plagued by the wily ghost of his adolescent self, Giles searches for Stella with the aid of a trumpet-wielding, semiretired barkeep, probing past and present until the horrible truth about her disappearance—and his own repressed complicity in the deed—comes fully to light. A complex tale, searching in its view of the British family yet at times almost saccharine in its nostalgic flourishes: lavish and engagingly sexy and surprising—a first-rate debut.