Michael Kimball: Green Girls

By MICHELE HEWITSON

This is a strange book set (partly) in a woman-made rainforest in Maine. It's about a writer, Jacob Winter, who writes strange books. His best-seller was called John. It was ostensibly about the death of his mother but turned out to be about a toilet on a train. He doesn't believe in plot; he doesn't believe in characters. The joke is that he becomes caught up in a plot-driven story with characters he'd never be able to imagine: an American-raised rainforest Indian called July; a lesbian ethnobotanist called Alix.

Meanwhile, at a prison across town a shaman is breaking out.

He's looking for an American-raised Indian called July whose finger he once ate.

Alas for Winter (and Kimball, and for us) the joke only stretches so far. There is too much plot - the worlds-about-to-collide, alternate-chapters trick gets a bit tedious. And those characters leave you thinking wistfully of another sort of book. One about a toilet on a train, perhaps?

Hodder Moa Beckett

$19.95