Need

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY FEB 2, 1997

Riffing pyrotechnically through the basic catalogue of New York City millennial malaise, British journalist Cohn's latest (following the nonfiction The Heart of the World) zeroes in on Wille D., Anna Crow, Kate Root and John Joe MaguireDfour hardbitten Manhattanites who converge in a pet store called Ferdousine's Zoo. Something really bad is in the offing, which is about all the impetus Cohn supplies. What's certain is that lives must entwine and destinies must eventually converge, a progression simplified by Wille's relationship with Anna and obsession with former carny gal Kate, who shares his fondness for knife-throwing. Though Anna fears Kate, she latches on to John Joe, a black Irishman, whose extended reveries on his youth provide the story with its most luminous writerly moments. Each character, however, gets to recount his or her tale. Anna has her Native American lineage and day job as a stripper; Willie goes on at amusing length about the glories of shoes; KateDby far the most interestingDdelivers the freakshow goods, making her mundanely philosophical existence as a caretaker of exotic birds and snakes all the more baffling. When the apocalypse finally descends, in the guise of a subterranean firefight, it's triggered by John Joe's engagement with a subway tunnel-dwelling cult called the Black Swans. Narrative briskness is often sacrificed for a verbal dazzle that betrays echoes of Joyce and Martin Amis, but notable coherence is not what will attract fans to the author's latest act of polyglot wonderment.