My Lover, the Rabbi

The unnamed narrator of Koestenbaum’s uproarious latest (after The Cheerful Scapegoat) recounts his affair with a male rabbi. Composed of 188 vignettes, ranging from a few lines to a few pages, the narrative playfully chronicles the narrator’s “up-and-down roller coaster relationship” with the “unconventional” rabbi, telling of their trysts in a New Jersey love nest, and how the rabbi lost his congregation after turning up to a bar mitzvah naked. As more secrets are revealed and the narrator’s obsession with the rabbi becomes all-consuming, a caper develops that hinges on the rabbi’s deceased son, Rockland; his wastrel nephew, whose “latent sanity” the narrator hopes to unlock; and his doting maid—none of whom are exactly who they seem. The narrator’s search for the truth leads him to a sect known as the Anti-Pontificators, a pair of brothers who make fetish jewelry, and the cemetery from which the ghosts of the rabbi’s past cling to him. As the ribald and searching quest narrative progresses, the narrator longs to know his lover completely, and eventually despairs that “I may never find my synagogue.” Perverse and perplexing, this novel is a scream. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc. (Mar.)