The First Book of Timothy (First Edition)

The Cold War is at its apex: John F. Kennedy's government faces down the Soviets over the Cuban missiles. At this moment of terror, Timothy Brown King, disengaged and disenchanted, abandons his illusory Ivy League life on a Joycean journey of exile and cunning. He will test the limits of his imagination and, in the process, confront the truth about his deceased father, a powerful but enigmatic Establishment figure, and probe the mystery of his parentage, of personal identity itself. Having announced "that his lifelong goal was to never ever believe in anything," Timothy is bent on "the genesis of a new life, the new manifesto, the promise of forbidden discovery and exposure."

This strange, quasi-psychedelic novel tells the story of Timothy Brown King, son of a late senator from Maine, and imbues it with more portent than most books of the Bible dare to project. During the days and nights of heightened tension that accompany the Cuban missile crisis, Timothy drops out of Dartmouth and boards a Greyhound bus for New York City. Although his father was pals with John F. Kennedy, Timothy is a card-carrying member of the American Communist Party (for reasons that have less to do with the intricacies of political economy than with the joys of countercultural nose-thumbing). The trajectory of his life soon intersects with a group of literature professors at New York University, among whom are to be found both Communist agents and FBI informants. In the course of a few days, while the fate of the world seems to hang in the balance, Timothy (who bears a certain resemblance to Myshkin in Dostoyevski's The Idiot) discovers a great deal about his deceased father, including the fact that he had a child by a beautiful Hungarian professor. Kelley is a kinetic writer who can turn conversations between characters into complex verbal dances. But just because he can, doesn't mean he should. At least not all the time. He makes the same mistake that Timothy does, taking ``one and all so seriously, including himself.'' Much of this novel reads like a rant against the excesses of American patriotism and vapidity during the Cold War. Like all rants, it's by turns thrilling and exhausting and consistently undisciplined.

Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

At the height of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, Timothy Eaton King, a 21-year-old Dartmouth undergraduate and scion of an influential, politically active family, is spurred by a mysterious letter to abandon his studies and set off on a journey to discover the truth about himself. His is a surreal odyssey replete with all the paranoia of the Cold War era and a cast of eccentrics reminiscent of some of Fellini's best. He learns that the truth is often a lot more complex than is first apparent-a reality that sets off bombs in his head. There is no question that Kelley possesses a caustic sense of humor and that he can turn a phrase; unfortunately, this first novel never quite catches fire. Timothy is just a bit too wordy and self-indulgent for his own good. For larger academic and public collections.
David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.