CITY OF GATES

English writer Elliott, a necromancer who dangles metaphysical concepts of Time, Love, and the Divine plus other headachy abstractions, sets her latest morality playground in the ancient city of Jerusalem—a cat's cradle of invisible lines ``ever- shifting between faith and non-faith and wrong faith, past and present, fantasy and the impossibility of truth.'' As in Elliott's Dr. Gruber's Daughter (1988), events and characters circle around a boardinghouse—here, that of Eugenia Muna, for whom Time is a loop (Mohammed on his flying fanciful steed was a lovely sight; Proust's diet was irritating; and Freud was on for a brief visit) and who cooks (like Countess Olga in Gruber) awful offal, but she will leave earth's carrion, at the close, to cook a sacred carp, which, it is said, harbors souls. Among the pilgrims of various stripe: bright-haired Daisy, for whom the richness of the city is ``like someone with a temperature''; crane-limbed Thomas Curtis, following the path of a 17th-century skeptic who ``fell into faith''; the Reverend Pooley, occasional aesthete and Anglican; and, in the garden, ``Miss Mary'' (Mary/Isis/Demeter—well, you get the idea). At Magdalene's brothel/cafe three friends meet: Rabbi Solomon; Hamil the minor imam; and Fedor, the man-without-a-past and adorer of Eugenia, his shelter and home. Meanwhile, two unhappy travelers to Jerusalem, set to rescue Thomas and Daisy respectively, are in hellish transit—in bleak and deadly places. On earth there are storms and rumors of more wars, a Crucifixion and a Birth. Lovers find one another, and love, as always, is ringed with hope, among old stones, a ``real world of telegrams and anger,'' and gates through which three Messiahs (probably one anyway, says Eugenia) may enter. A lavishly allusive narrative that entertains tantalizing possibility, identity switches, and brightly chattering heads. Admirers of Elliott's teasing wit and wisdom will find more here.