The Partisan

With his first novel, The Plagiarist, Benjamin Cheever was lauded by reviewers everywhere for his "witty dialogues, memorable characters, mini-zingers ending each episode" (Newsweek). Cheever now fulfills the promise of that first novel with The Partisan, a story narrated by Nelson, a young film student at New York University. At the center are his "Aunt and Uncle" and his sister Nar (short for Narcissus). Uncle, Jonas Collingwood, is the revered and crusty author of "eighteen spectacularly gloomy novels. The critics were impressed with his eye for the telling detail. The public hadn't noticed." This cozy if dysfunctional quartet lead a cloistered life in the New York suburbs, with Nelson dreaming of owning a car, Aunt burning dinners, Jonas banging out his novels in the root cellar, and Nar charming men and desiring a horse. Then an article appears in the Herald Tribune hinting that Jonas's last book was a thinly veiled memoir of the years he spent with the resistance in Italy during the war. This gives Jonas just the right sort of image ("the novelist who shot men") to promote him as "The Hemingway of Westchester." With this newly found fame comes a buyout of his publishers by a German conglomerate, Ich Spreche Nicht Viel Deutsch ("best known for the manufacture of common household tranquilizers"), which offers him a huge advance to write his memoirs about being a partisan in Italy and thus solidify his new literary mythic status. In the wake of sudden and comical amounts of attention and money comes a fan bearing gifts with a certain (to Nelson) sinister intent. And so the stage is set for complications, revelations of family secrets, and much, much laughter. Written with the same accomplished style and humor that characterized The Plagiarist, Benjamin Cheever's The Partisan also reveals something new and rewarding - an even greater (and rarer) depth of feeling and concern, sure signs of growth in an already celebrated writer.

Once again, Cheever (The Plagiarist, 1992) chronicles life with a distinguished writer--in a novel that's even more diffuse than his first. Not nearly as funny as it thinks it is, this hurried fiction sets off in all sorts of directions, and never finds its way back. Nelson Collingwood, a 20-year-old virgin, and his sexually advanced sister live with their guardians, Aunt Elspeth and Uncle Jonas, in Westchester. Jonas is a much-admired but always broke novelist who rents a house on the Rockefeller estate, where he imposes his high-cultural view of things (e.g., no TV). After 16 novels with a small publisher known primarily for farm equipment catalogues, Jonas receives a huge advance for a WW II memoir, which his new publisher hopes will be his breakout book--the only problem being some doubt about Jonas's actual involvement in the war. Meanwhile, NYU student Nelson, an aspiring ad-copywriter, works for the summer at a local freebie ad paper, all the while pining for one Amy Rose, a suburban goddess spending her summer in Washington State. Nelson's ``Goodbye Columbus'' story is soon superseded by strange doings at home, where an obsequious biographer has attached himself to Jonas. All of which forces the family to reexamine its rather odd history, involving Aunt Elspeth's much prettier sister and the true parentage of Nelson and his own sister. While the biographer flatters his way into Jonas's life, Jonas's obnoxious new editor pressures him for a real commercial book. And Jonas delivers in record time so that he can bail out his sister-in-law from a bad debt and also buy Nelson a fancy car, which becomes the vehicle of his accidental death. Cheever fleshes out this elliptical tale with lots of sitcom sarcasm, plenty of bad jokes, and many pointless barbs at the innocent. His animus toward biographers and publishers may be justified, but seems like plain sour grapes here. All in all, a mess. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.