Take a Good Book

Disillusionment reigned in the fiction of the eighties. Written in the flat patois of the perpetually jaded, one novel after another told of some glum sap resigned to apathy. Which makes Tor Seidler's first novel, Take a Good Look, a refreshing change of pace. The story of a young, untalented screenwriter who quits his job and rearranges his life to court a woman he barely knows, this book is a flashback to the days when heroes were more quixotic, more romantic—and less overbearingly wise. Good Look is meant for grown-ups (among its characters, for instance, is a pair of incestuous identical twins), but even when describing decadence, it has the jaunty, wide-eyed tone of a fairy tale, a reminder that Seidler is also the author of several acclaimed children's books. In the end, our hero takes the prescribed good look at some of his illusions and grows a little older, a little wiser—but not, thank goodness, too wise.

J.R.