Jonathan Raban: Wings

Reviewed by MICHAEL LARSEN for canvas

For him, writing had always been a continuation of reading by other means, says Raban about his main character, Tom Janeway. This would seem to be the author's philosophy as much at it is that of his literary invention.

Raban is a skilled executor of the former skill, and if his lists of books - and love of them - which pepper this novel are anything to go by, he's devoted a great deal of time to studying others who earlier plied his craft.

And craft is what he is best at. The plot builds slowly, like piecing together supposingly disparate images into a photograph collection.

The professor and wife separate as she becomes sucked in by dot.com glamour and he retreats to his library, their son caught betwixt. These events are all intertwined with a Chinese stowaway and his vision of the great American Dream. The characters reveal themselves slowly; only the intentionally one-dimensional Beth is easy to nail early on in the piece.

Tom is our main focus - a Hungarian immigrant who came by way of Essex and settled in Seattle. His geographical wanderings giving Raban plenty of opportunity to remind us of his "other job" as an accomplished travel writer.

This genre he draws from for his own personal new home town, one he evidently loves. Seattle has never seemed so interesting, from its grimy docks right to the top of its Space Needle but, more importantly, down in the suburbs where the snobs, immigrants, misfits and general populace carry out their business.

Tom's faintly dusty donnish world unravels when Beth shifts out, and he becomes a suspect in a child abduction case (and is grilled by the superbly drawn Detective Nagel). Chick the Chinaman moves from stowaway to Tom's roofing contractor and the games begin.

And it isn't as far-fetched as it sounds, mainly due to Raban's adroit ways of threading it all together. The writing reminds you that you're in the company of supreme talent, as do the characters, especially the ones that drop in and out and colour up the general tone of the main story.

This is probably a little grey and downbeat for some, perhaps even a little old-fashioned in its view of modern American society, although whether that's Raban or Tom it becomes difficult to tell. Waxwings does finish on a slightly uncertain note, but nothing detracts from what is another sound offering from one of the English language's finest proponents.

Picador, $49.95

*****

Michael Larsen is an Auckland freelance writer.