THE MAN IN THE WINDOW

By the author of the arresting Max Lakeman and the Beautiful Stranger (1990): a Marty-themed, whimsical novel with flashes of bright fantasy and high hilarity—all about two losing loners who find each other—and love. The story begins with the death of retired hardware-store owner Atlas Malone—no simple affair, involving as it does greetings, conversing with, and digging the message of a most familiar angel. Here, dying is a far from peaceful matter—whether in the Malone preserves, where live Atlas's wife Gracie and horribly disfigured son Louis, or in the Intensive Care Unit of the local hospital, where toils short, squat, unlovely Iris. Take one long-term patient, the dying comatose Tube Man who will speak—one ghostly word at a time. Then there's the town undertaker, who grabbed a gold ring after dying—for a reason having to do with an old dirty deed. Another wrongdoer will show up in the hospital, the ever-drunk Harvey, a link to Louis because Harvey had shared a transcendent moment with Louis 16 years before, when the teen-age and then handsome Louis had yet to be disfigured by the fire Harvey claims he set. Of course, Louis, a recluse these many years, always encased in a scarf and hat, and Iris the lowly and lonely, do get together—but it's only after Louis's plummet (or was it an ascension?) from a second-story window and a gathering of the world as represented by the neighbors who accompany him in a loud caravan to the hospital. Then, while Iris and Louis heed the incredible summons to love, Gracie and Iris's tottery father also pair off. An attractive flight into romance's more fabulous dimension- -but whether or not the fantastic palls, the ructions and crackings wise by the nurses laboring at incredible machines and patients are a fascination and delight. Cohen continues to bemuse and entertain.