City of Gates

English writer Elliott, a necromancer who dangles metaphysical concepts of Time, Love, and the Divine plus other headachy abstractions, sets her latest morality playground in the ancient city of Jerusalem - a cat's cradle of invisible lines "ever-shifting between faith and non-faith and wrong faith, past and present, fantasy and the impossibility of truth." As in Elliott's Dr. Gruber's Daughter (1988), events and characters circle around a boardinghouse - here, that of Eugenia Muna, for whom Time is a loop (Mohammed on his flying fanciful steed was a lovely sight; Proust's diet was irritating; and Freud was on for a brief visit) and who cooks (like Countess Olga in Gruber) awful offal, but she will leave earth's carrion, at the close, to cook a sacred carp, which, it is said, harbors souls. Among the pilgrims of various stripe: bright-haired Daisy, for whom the richness of the city is "like someone with a temperature"; crane-limbed Thomas Curtis, following the path of a 17th-century skeptic who "fell into faith"; the Reverend Pooley, occasional aesthete and Anglican; and, in the garden, "Miss Mary" (Mary/Isis/Demeter - well, you get the idea). At Magdalene's brothel/cafe three friends meet: Rabbi Solomon; Hamil the minor imam; and Fedor, the man-without-a-past and adorer of Eugenia, his shelter and home. Meanwhile, two unhappy travelers to Jerusalem, set to rescue Thomas and Daisy respectively, are in hellish transit - in bleak and deadly places. On earth there are storms and rumors of more wars, a Crucifixion and a Birth. Lovers find one another, and love, as always, is ringed with hope, among old stones, a "real world of telegrams and anger," and gates through which three Messiahs (probably one anyway, says Eugenia) may enter. A lavishly allusive narrative that entertains tantalizing possibility, identity switches, and brightly chattering heads. Admirers of Elliott's teasing wit and wisdom will find more here. (Kirkus Reviews)