In statistics, they're called "outliers" -- things that fall outside the norm. Outliers in the human condition are the common theme in six new novels reviewed below. Loved or not, real or not, oppressed or not, the characters in these books are outside the norm. Not all succeed, but each offers its own view of who we are and who we could have been.
Cai Emmons examines the unthinkable in His Mother's Son (Harcourt, 376 pages, $25): intra-family murder. Jana Thomas is a doctor in Washington state and the mother of a first-grader. She is the disciplinarian; her husband, Cooper, is the gentler force as they grapple with the challenge of raising their son. But Jana's rigid control is rooted in fear: She has never told her husband her real name and the secret, bloody history of her family.
Emmons, a playwright and filmmaker, deftly builds tension and interest as she peels back the layers of Jana and her secrets. Why someone kills a family member is not a question that can be answered, and she wisely doesn't try. Instead, His Mother's Son is a study of what happens afterward, how survivors cope with pain and loss and guilt, and how the shadows of fear and evil can fall across the next generation. Emmons writes gracefully and powerfully about the relentless pressure of grief and fear.
*
Last Stop Vienna (Simon & Schuster, 288 pages, $25) by Andrew Nagorski poses an engaging "what if" question: What if Adolph Hitler had never controlled Germany? Karl Naumann is only 15 at the end of the First World War, and, like the rest of Germany, he is suffering the aftermath of defeat. The money is worthless, there is no food or work, and his brother Gerhard won't be coming home because he has died in combat.
As the sorrow and humiliations mount, young Karl turns to politics, falling into a group of soldiers who can't accept defeat. Violent and reactionary, they roam unchecked across the chaos of postwar Germany. From there, it's a short step into the Nazis and their promises to restore Germany's power.
Nagorski's research and skillful writing bring Karl, Hitler and the party stalwarts to life here, illuminating how the Nazis were able to attract so many followers. The Fuhrer's oddities (all true, as far as I could see) are explored in detail, and one of them -- his incestuous relationship with his niece -- becomes the catalyst for a chain of events that didn't happen but could have. This is a good novel and an effective and scholarly examination of the internal philosophical battles within the Nazi Party before World War II.
*
There are among us some singular people who just make things happen. Mary Madigan is such a one in Along Came Mary (Simon & Schuster, 368 pages, $24) by Jo-Ann Mapson. This is the book version of a "chick flick," with a lot of smart women maneuvering past some pretty stupid men, but Mapson mostly steers clear of bitterness or man-bashing and the result is a funny, readable novel.
Madigan is a country singer, a rodeo performer, a dog handler and an enigma. When she ditches an alcoholic loser and takes up with an unemployed newspaper reporter, the two embark on a journey to California that leads them eventually to both their pasts. It gets a little gooey and too cute in spots -- think Thelma and Louise crossed with Judging Amy -- but it's a fun trip.
*
What's in a name? If you're writer Peter Lefcourt, a lot of history when the name is Karen. Eleven Karens (Simon & Schuster, 240 pages, $24) is the story of all the women named Karen who have figured in Lefcourt's love life. This is not so much a novel as a series of vignettes wrapped around a repeated theme.
Lefcourt has written for television and the movies in addition to his novels, and it shows. There's some snappy writing, some very funny one-liners and a lot of witty anecdotes here, but by Karen No. 6, one finds oneself checking to see just how many more Karens there are. Still, Lefcourt's Karen-pilgrimage is entertaining and frothy fare, and he maintains the lighthearted and self-deprecating tone that kissing and telling requires.
*
For Freddie Lee Johnson III, there is nothing funny about the war between the sexes. In A Man Finds His Way (One World, 352 pages, $23.95), Johnson brings us history professor Darius Collins, about whom the kindest thing to say is that there is much he does not get.
When the novel opens, he is having dinner with his girlfriend of six months. He thinks they're headed someplace special. But Darius has apparently missed a lot of signals: Marcy has something to say, too, and it's sorry, there's someone else. Darius is enraged. First his ex-wife, now Marcy. Women are cruel, fickle, demanding harpies and why don't they understand him and cherish him? Moreover, Darius is black and very sure his burden is compounded by race.
Johnson has not written a love story, or even a hate story, here. Instead, he has written a lumbering, misogynistic treatise with a lot of heavy-handed lecturing about racism. Ultimately, the book fails because it's impossible to feel sorry for Darius, let alone like him. He says he wants true love, but he can't stop grading every woman he encounters on the crudest kind of sexual-attraction scale (so crude, in fact, that it cannot be reprinted here). Does Darius learn? Nope. He just keeps trying and failing and raging, in that order, every time another sister disappoints. No stereotype has been left unexplored in this story: good ministers, troubled teens, bad gangs, even a flap at the university about whether a Louis Farrakhan clone should be allowed to speak.
The reader is supposed to conclude by the forced, feel-good ending that Darius has found his way. I don't think so. Darius was thinking about getting laid on the first page and on the last page, and in between Johnson fails to make the case that Darius has learned anything at all. It's a lost opportunity for Darius and the reader, too.
*
Crudeness is put to better use in The Slynx (Houghton Mifflin, 288 pages, $24). Tatyana Tolstaya, a great-grandniece of Leo Tolstoy, has set her allegorical novel 200 years in the future, after "the Blast." What used to be Moscow is now a small community inhabited by people disfigured and genetically twisted by nuclear radiation, and run by a tyrant who issues periodic edicts "for my people."
He's also got a staff of workers who are copying his books (they're all the works of other, more famous writers, but only the Oldeners, those who survived the Blast, have figured this out). In the hands of a less energetic writer, this could be dull business, but Tolstaya's vision is so vivid and complete that it tugs the reader along, even if some of the symbolism is confusing. She's created a memorable world here -- not since Helen Gurley Brown declared that no Cosmo girl could be a "mouseburger" has anyone found such witty delight in the role of mice as a staple. This is Orwellian in a most Russian way, and it reaches an instructive conclusion without boring the reader.
Dail Willis, a former reporter and editor at The Sun, is a financial writer living in Charlottesville, Va. She has written book reviews for The Sun, the Associated Press and other newspapers.