First Fiction

2182 kHz

By David Masiel

Random House: 296 pp., $22.95

The title of David Masiel’s thrilling first novel refers to a radio frequency reserved for distress signals at sea. Similarly, Masiel’s story of a sailor adrift in his own uncertainty amid the deadly floes of the Alaskan Arctic is like an extended distress call from the human soul. For the wandering Henry Seine--unlucky in marriage and plagued by gauzy visitations from his late father and other perished associates--work on the open sea offers a head-clearing alternative to the earthbound chores of love and family, yet it also means brain-dulling grunt work on drilling barges and the persistent threat of bodily harm. Still, the siren beckons, especially after Henry receives a Dear John letter from his wife back in Seattle. “More than ever he felt convinced he had no business among normal people ....” Henry’s salty comrades are far from normal. They’re the kind of chemically tweaked eccentrics we recognize from the inspired work of Thom Jones and Denis Johnson: Instead of Queequeg and Ahab, Masiel gives us the Big Man, a 6-foot, 8-inch Slav obsessed with the fate of his own excrement, and the Chemist, a paranoid, profanity-spewing tugboat captain. As a modern Ishmael, Henry goes along for the ride until he picks up a distress call from a scientist stranded on a disintegrating ice island. When Henry decides to rescue this Arctic castaway with a hamstrung tugboat and a crew of misfits, “2182 kHz” really begins to send out soul-stirring signals. Masiel expertly lays bare the hazards--and necessity--of redemption against the cruelest of emotional and physical environments, and his exacting, lyrical reportage--filled with H-bitts, fiddley decks and tabular bergs--is worthy of John McPhee.

*

THE TROUBLE WITH CATHERINE

By Andes Hruby

Dutton: 214 pp., $23.95

CeCe Lacey’s fiance is Prince Charming: He’s tall, comes from a WASPy New York family, is about to be made partner at a white-shoe law firm and actually likes to jog. But there are red flags: For instance, Steve--the fiance--doesn’t know that the Moorish idol fish belongs in an aquarium, not on a dinner plate. This is a pretty big deal for CeCe: At 29, she’s running the thriving family business down at Fulton Fish Market. While Steve is proud of his bread-winning future wife, he’s increasingly put off by her tomboyishness and her penchant for saying the truth at cocktail parties. For CeCe, Steve’s snobbishness and superficiality prove that he doesn’t love her for who she really is. But just who is she really? It’s not clear if Andes Hruby knows or if she’s coyly showing us that identity is as messy as gutting a fish. CeCe, despite her independence and her gutsy sexuality, harbors some vintage “Cathy”-esque hang-ups: about her looks, her past and her need for validation through a wedding announcement in the New York Times. But the confusion only makes Hruby’s Bridget Jones all the more attractive as Hruby goes about demolishing the already flimsy fairy tale of the perfect partner. In the end, the newly single CeCe--fishmonger and spouse-seeker--touches on a suitable many-fish-in-the-sea lament: “It just seems like I can’t separate the good buys from the bad bargains.”

*

THE SUMMER FLETCHER

GREEL LOVED ME

By Suzanne Kingsbury

Scribner: 300 pp., $25

About halfway through this absorbing novel of nascent love, racial tension and criminal secrets, Haley Ellyson, 16 and falling hard for the son of the county judge, muses about Fourth of Julys past, of “[c]heap, dangerous fireworks that take off people’s fingertips and blow their eardrums.” Suzanne Kingsbury packs her debut full of bittersweet moments that contain real danger under a taut surface of nostalgia and adolescent yearning. Haley is one of Kingsbury’s two narrators; the other is Fletcher Greel, the judge’s son, 18 and back home in Houser Banks, Miss., after graduating from boarding school up north. What unfolds over this sticky Delta summer is the story of Haley and Fletcher’s shared collision course with True Love; of their friendship with Riley and his secret black girlfriend Crystal; and of Haley’s sketchy knowledge of a murdered black man buried deep in the woods on her property. While the four friends spend lazy afternoons at the swimming hole, their Arcadian summer is continually tarnished by brutality: Riley’s redneck cousin threatens to expose Riley and Crystal’s illicit romance; Fletcher is continually targeted as a Yankee; and Haley can’t muster resistance to the advances of Bo Dickens, a middle-aged family friend who just may be the killer. Throughout, Kingsbury gives us a Southern landscape glazed in honey; it’s a seductive backdrop for the innocence-dashing lessons these four teenagers learn together, lessons that may take a lifetime to unlearn.