DORIT IN LESBOS

Never diffident, Olson (Utah, 1987; The Woman Who Escaped from Shame, 1986; etc.) again boldly mixes philosophy, art theory, and a good bit on the aesthetics of landscape gardeners with a story that more often than not reads like a thriller. It has at its center a heroine, mysterious and beautiful, so we are told, who seems to make a lot of people, more usually women than men, fall irrevocably in love with her. Jack, the narrator, a landscape architect in California, recently beaten up by some thugs, returns to Chicago as executor of his uncle Edward's estate. Staying with his aunt, he begins to sort out Edward's paintings and to read the letters and papers that his aunt, Edward's estranged wife, has kept over the years, many unopened. As Jack reads on, he learns of his uncle's visit to the island of Lesbos, where he had seen a beautiful young woman, Dorit. Back in London, Edward meets up again with Dorit. Using skills developed as an illustrator for medical books, Edward soon becomes successful as a painter, although the surface of his pictures is merely covering for intricate drawings, and even hidden messages. One picture eerily prefigures a strange encounter Jack has while driving just outside Chicago. Another commands "find Angela," Edward's long-lost daughter. Jack's attempts to trace Dorit lead to the murder of two of her friends and the violent death of an art curator Jack had consulted about the value of the paintings. The plot twists and turns, as Jack returns to California, hides on the yacht of Dorit's former husband, escapes from the yacht in Panama, only to rejoin it as it sails to Lesbos, where all is explained, not necessarily satisfactorily. Olson writes with verve, even brilliance, and the plot here is often quite enthralling, but the discursiveness and ultimately the sheer improbability of his story detract from his considerable talents. Fascinating but flawed.