ICELAND

The love of a passive typewriter repairman for a young woman who works in an organ pool (don’t ask) precipitates even more bizarre misadventures in this weird Bildungsroman by the California author of the story collection Blood Lake (not reviewed). Krusoe’s narrator Paul, an affable innocent who’s suffering from the failure of his own (unidentified) “organ,” finds love and marriage in Iceland’s volcanic terrain, a life of crime back home in the US, and little satisfaction in his devotion to the unpredictable organ “stimulator” Emily. Iceland’s labored eccentricity (think early Barthelme, or even earlier Pynchon) is much less engaging than Paul’s odd talent for coming up with head-scratching non sequiturs, e.g., “I may be dying . . . and the thought of taking on a new life style seems a bit too much to handle.” Readers will concur.