Spectacular Happiness

From Chekhov to Walker Percy, from William Carlos Williams to Ethan Canin, doctors have turned to fiction with a compelling acuteness of observation. Now Peter Kramer joins their ranks with a sly and provocative novel. Like his international bestseller LISTENING TO PROZAC, SPECTACULAR HAPPINESS examines the effects of drug-induced social adaptation; like SHOULD YOU LEAVE? it weighs the relative values of intimacy and autonomy. But here Kramer is free to plumb the depths of his imagination and he has done so with spectacular results. Someone has been blowing up bayfront trophy homes on Cape Cod and doing a meticulous job of it. Chip Samuels has been fingered as the prime suspect. He seems an odd choice: a junior college English teacher and part-time handyman, he is a devoted friend, husband and father. But he did it, all out of loyalty to a friend and to the radical ideals he and his wife once shared. Pursued by the FBI and a voracious media, Chip has limited time in which to explain himself to his estranged son and rescue his wife from her medicated conformity. His only way out may be to turn his notoriety into celebrity - to exploit 'the society of the spectacle.'