At villa, things go from bad to verse

June 10, 2007|Diane White

Little Stalker
By Jennifer Belle
Riverhead, 333 pp., $24.95

The Sonnet Lover
By Carol Goodman
Ballantine, 350 pp., $24.95

A Much Married Man
By Nicholas Coleridge
St. Martin's, 464 pp., $24.95

Readers who like to escape into books for sheer entertainment and enjoy a well-written novel that refuses to inspire or uplift or redeem or teach a lesson -- except, by example, a writing lesson -- may want to add one or two of these novels to their summer reading lists.

Jennifer Belle's very funny "Little Stalker" is an offbeat, surprisingly sweet story about voyeurism, celebrity, obsession, and writer's block. Rebekah Kettle narrates her story in an irresistible voice that is world-weary, sarcastic, and vulnerable. Rebekah's first novel was a bestseller, but she can't get started on a second. Her love life is a mess, she may have a brain tumor, and her father is behaving even more oddly than usual. Rebekah takes refuge in fantasy, watching reruns of "Little House on the Prairie" and obsessing about Arthur Weeman , a Woody Allen-like filmmaker she has adored from afar for 20 years, since she was 13, when her parents divorced. She's so besotted with the reclusive movie director that she steals a check from her father and spends $22,000 to furnish her Manhattan apartment with props from Weeman's movies: an oxygen tank, a giant plastic hot dog, and a gondola, among other improbable items.

Feeling guilty, Rebekah grudgingly agrees to help her father by filling in at his medical practice until he hires someone new; his longtime office manager, Irmabelle, has quit in an emotional huff, leaving Rebekah wondering about the nature of their relationship. When Rebekah volunteers to help one of her father's patients, the senile-when-it-suits-her Mrs. Williams, she discovers that the elderly woman's apartment affords a view into Weeman's kitchen. Rebekah becomes a regular, bringing Mrs. Williams Genoa salami and Depends and watching Weeman, who spends a lot of time staring at young girls in the school playground beneath his window. Rebekah starts writing him flirtatious fan letters from her 13-year-old self, pretending to be a precocious girl named Thalia. She thinks a child muse might help him overcome his creative block: "Words from a child could inspire men to greatness, make them hit home runs out of the park and things like that."

Rebekah/Thalia succeeds in inspiring Weeman, not entirely in the way she'd hoped. "Little Stalker" is a treat -- hilarious, richly textured, subtly insightful, and undeniably twisted.

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