Non mysteries of note
THE SOUL THIEF, Charles Baxter, Pantheon. $20.00
In Nathaniel Mason's first few months as a graduate student in upstate New York, he is drawn into a circle of people who seem just beyond his grasp, including Jerome who seems to have appropriated parts of Nathaniel's past that Nathaniel cannot remember having told him. Thirty years later, after Nathaniel has recovered from a total breakdown, Jerome turns up again to suggest that Nathaniel's identity may not in fact be his own. Baxter is the author of The Feast of Love and Saul and Patsy.
HIS ILLEGAL SELF, Peter Carey, Knopf. $25.00
Che is a precocious seven-year-old raised by his New York grandmother. But he yearns for his famous parents - radical activists at Harvard in the late sixties, and now, in 1972, among the FBI's most wanted. Che longs for them to come for him and one afternoon, it seems that they have and soon Che is on the run too. Finally arriving in Australia, Che must confront his life and finds that nothing is as it seems. If all he suspects about his parents is true, what should he do?