Ray of the Star

An atmospherically intense love story and a thrilling, fantastical tale of lost souls in peril.From Publishers WeeklyHunt (Indiana, Indiana) delivers a fourth novel about drifters that unfortunately never wanders into particularly interesting territory. Unable to find meaning in his life and suffering from a nasty bout of restless leg syndrome, Harry returns to Barcelona, where he once spent a few happy months. At a cafe, a stranger, Ireneo, beckons him to follow, and Harry soon realizes that Ireneo is really after one of the living statues who perform for the tourists, a sad-looking girl in an angel costume. Smitten with the girl, Harry decides to become a living statue of Don Quixote complete with golden body paint designed to attract her interest. Meanwhile, Ireneo, sidetracked by his mother's sudden illness, searches for the angel while imagining that he is being pursued by ghosts. While lyrically written, the origin of Harry's malaise is never made clear, and an attempt to fuse his meanderings over the city with the metaphysical explorations of his fellow lost souls is where the novel badly stumbles, leaving strands of the early plot dangling over a sour mishmash of unexplainable sadness. (Sept.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. About the AuthorCalled "one of the most talented young writers on the American scene today" by Paul Auster, Laird Hunt is the author of three previous, genre-bending novels: The Impossibly, The Exquisite, and Indiana, Indiana. A former press officer at the United Nations and current faculty member at the University of Denver, he lives in Boulder, Colorado.