BOOK REVIEW / NOVEL : A Look Through a Skewed Kaleidoscope : GLORIA: A Novel <i> by Mark Coovelis</i> ; Pocket Books, $21, 242 pages

Unreliable narrators are as old as the novel form itself--characters who purport to correct the record, but in their fictional worlds spend much time manipulating the reader, justifying their lives and choices.

There’s no question that Marvin Stone, the narrator of “Gloria,” is unreliable, but even on the last page it’s impossible to gauge the extent of his unreliability.

Yes, he’s genuinely haunted by the death of his sister at the hands of a serial killer, obsessed with his failure to save her . . . yet unable to acknowledge fully his complicity in Gloria’s fate.

You’d never guess, given the sophistication and craftiness of its narration, that this novel is Mark Coovelis’ first. And that’s not the only thing making “Gloria” a remarkable literary debut: Stone’s version of events is ambiguously colored, and complicated, by the fact that Gloria has become, posthumously, something of a media star--through the accounts of the journalist-scholar Lauren, who seduced Stone to ensure his cooperation with her book on Gloria’s murder, and that of the killer, Tunney, who prompted Lauren’s interest by claiming Gloria had participated in his killing spree.

Like the film “Rashomon,” famous for giving equal credence to various versions of a crime, “Gloria” shows us intertwined versions, all reactive to one another, none trustworthy. Together they demonstrate that truth is unavoidably incomplete, invariably dependent on context and personal interest.

Stone, a Berkeley restaurateur, begins his story by explaining that Gloria’s real name was Elizabeth and that in adulthood, she began to disappear for days at a time. At first she lived in Oregon, near her parents and with a family of her own, but she eventually abandoned them, moving to the San Francisco area to be near her brother (or so Stone speculates).

Did Gloria want Stone to protect her, as he had not in the past, and even though she rarely talked to him? Did she blame him for her rootlessness, for her inability to form healthy relationships?

These are questions that pass through the reader’s mind, and sometimes through Stone’s, although he seems intent on avoiding rather than answering questions.

The ideas behind Gloria--the nature of truth, the distortions inherent in storytelling, the strange powers people have over one another--turn out to be more compelling than their execution.

Stone’s narration, although generally sincere, is also self-protective and thus patchwork, fragmentary: He skips frequently from present time to the recent past to the distant past, then back to a new present time. Unable, and at times unwilling, to give a personal account, Stone quotes extensively from Lauren’s tape-recorded talks with Tunney, reproduces a long passage from Lauren’s best-selling book, sets down dramatic scenes from the film based on the book.

Reading “Gloria” often feels like looking through a kaleidoscope at an angle: It’s frustrating as well as tantalizing, for the viewer must wait until a center reveals itself, until images resolve into a pattern.

Stone eventually reveals a secret that may explain Gloria’s ill-fated life--a fact he has kept not only from Lauren and the reader, but also, at some level, from himself--yet its disclosure proves a disappointment. Given this novel’s high literary ambitions, you’d think Coovelis could have found a fresh device around which to build Gloria’s story.

The overall impact of “Gloria” isn’t compromised by such weaknesses, however, because Coovelis’ web can withstand the failure of a few threads--which, in any case, are constantly being modified and re-spun. Tunney’s account, which seems pure fiction at first, eventually is shown to hold some truth; Lauren’s version is plausible, but Stone, by withholding information, has ensured its incompleteness.

Stone’s story, as he intends, is closer to reality: When he writes of Gloria in this book’s final sentence, “I remember her in the light of truth,” the reader believes him. For all that, though, the reader is simultaneously skeptical, because he recognizes that between what Stone remembers, and what he says, there stands a yawning gap.

“Gloria” is a good novel because it does one of those things fiction does best--exploring the known as a way of outlining the vast expanse of the unknown.