Creator

Leven enters this first novel in the heavyweight-comedy-class, and it does go the distance (almost 500 pages) and score a lot of points. But it loses, finally, on a decision. Harry Wolper, M.D., 69 and a Nobel laureate for his work in contraception, is still cankered by the loss of his wife Lucy early in their marriage. He's kept a few cells from her hand preserved, and one day, while doing an illegal abortion in the late Sixties, he extracts from the abortee - wonder of wonders! - a zygote, a perfect egg. So [larry fertilizes this egg with Lucy's cells and, with the help of the fortuitously discovered "Great Wiper" (the medium for creating life), he produces new life parthenogenetically. But playing God isn't Harry's role only in. the lab. He's also writing a novel, "The Adventures of Boris Lafkin," whose hero knows all sorts of trouble: violence, incarceration in a sanitarium, crazy lovers, and finally some bliss - marriage to wonderful Barbara, who in no time, however, falls victim to a brain hemorrhage and hangs on by a thread to existence. With real-life Harry and fictional Boris, then, Leven has arranged a shaggy-dog set-up: Boris complains to his creator, Harry ("Isn't there another fucking way to let out your feelings? I'm not Job, Harry. I'm not built to be a martyr. I can't take it anymore. I want my wife back, Harry. I love her. Why the hell can't you understand that?"); and Harry can only wonder back, amazed that "Boris insists on retaining his hope. He refuses to reject my existence as his author. He does not despair. He continues above ground, human and extraordinarily common. And what is worst of all, there is not a damn thing I can do about it." These "parallel lines on a collision course" would be more heavyhanded than they are if not for Leven's sprightly, shtick-like dialogue, often very funny. Yet it ultimately seems like an awful lot of strenuous, misplaced effort: constructing a literary palace for what is basically a lightweight, heartwarming, cliched message - that people are strange and wonderful, that "a philosophy of the gut" is best. So - highly talented work that never quite adds up. (Kirkus Reviews)