Novels range from poignant to hilarious

On a ‘Mission’
In “Mission to America” (Doubleday, $24), Walter Kirn writes as Mason LaVerle of the Aboriginal Fulfilled Apostles, a matriarchal Bluff, Mont., cult whose belief system is a  hodgepodge of faiths embracing, among myriad other principles, “the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, and the Hindu Law of Karma.”  As Bluff’s population dwindles, the AFA is in desperate need of fresh blood from “Terrestria,” the outside world.  Mason, whose only knowledge of Terrestria is what he’s pieced together from Trivial Pursuit cards, sets out with his compatriot Elder Stark on an evangelical recruiting mission, one that they kick off by checking into a motel and raptly watching seven straight hours of television.

They come to rest in Snowshoe Springs, an affluent Colorado resort where they minister to many lost souls: Lara, the fading soap-opera star who calls them to the scene of her botched bathtub suicide attempt; Betsy, who holes up in her mother’s basement accumulating vintage clothes; and the ultra-rich Effingham family, possessed of their own mountain range and bison herd, whom Stark coldly targets as the AFA’s potential financial salvation. Along the way, Mason gradually becomes aware that his own path to redemption may be just as misguided as everyone else’s.

Kirn wryly captures the saucer-eyed viewpoint of a man who has essentially just fallen to Earth — when an entrepreneur considers hiring Mason as a Mystery Shopper, he notes, “You haven’t been desensitized. You’ll notice things.” His sardonic prose recalls Chuck Pahlaniuk; the two authors share a cynicism about human beings’ capacity for self-delusion, yet Kirn manages to make his subjects endearing in spite of his tacit recognition of their fundamental flaws. A tertiary character calls Mason an “upbeat nihilist,” and the appellation might just as well be applied to his creator.    —K.R.

Hero worship
Scott Turow, famed for legal thrillers, trades the courtroom for the battlefield in "Ordinary Heroes" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $25). Turow tells the story of Stewart Dubinsky, a man in search of the person his father really was, coming at last to know him through written recollections from World War II.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

It’s never clear why Turow uses the son-father framing device. Dubinsky basically discovers a full manuscript that tells his father’s story, and when the point of view does switch to back to the son, it feels too authorial — as if Turow is directing the reader to reflect on what's just been read. Yet Dubinsky's father, David Dubin, has a far more compelling story. Dubin's a lawyer by trade, who finds himself roped into the terrors of war. A scene where he and his men lay in the snow, playing dead until the enemy finally recedes, is horrifying in its detail.

Sadly, the book's major plot, in which Dubin tracks down rogue officer Robert Martin, comes off as much too cinematic. Martin and his loyal comrade, Polish refugee Gita Lodz, talk Hollywood talk. In one spot, Lodz tells Dubin “I have fought because the Nazis are wrong and we are right and the Nazis must lose. But I also fight death.” You can practically hear the background music swell whenever she speaks.

Ultimately, this is a story about that old cliché: One must discover for himself the futility of war. And while it’s hard not to admire the book’s heart, getting to that sentiment may feel a bit like trudging through fluffy Hollywood snow.    —P.N.

Model behavior           
It’s easy, and a little lazy, to call Mary Gaitskill’s characters bitter. Instead, they're active, selfish people who blindly hurt others but ultimately treat themselves worst of all. Her latest book, “Veronica,” (Pantheon, $23) tells the story of two unlikely friends: former model Alison and Veronica, a proofreader who died of AIDS.

Gaitskill follows Alison’s rise and fall as a model, and Gaitskill imbues her with every good and bad characteristic a model's life entails. She’s beautiful, of course, and more than willing to use her looks to take advantage of any situation. She’s also misused by men, estranged from her family and generally detached from the world. Veronica is a completely different creature, with bleached blond hair and a bisexual user boyfriend, who eventually sets her upon the road to AIDS. Yet Alison finds herself drawn to her, even more so when she realizes that Veronica is ill.

The most devastating parts of Gaitskill’s novel are when Alison admits to herself that she’s embarrassed by Veronica, that she was a terrible friend, and that at times she didn’t even like her. There’s so much unsentimental rawness to Gaitskill's style here — she unforgivingly leaves her characters naked for our judgment, this making them all that much more empathetic. Ultimately, readers may squirm as they begin to recognize parts of themselves in Alison. And that’s just the way Gaitskill wants it.     —P.N.

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper is MSNBC.com's Books Editor. Paige Newman is MSNBC.com's Movies Editor. Kim Rollins is a writer in Seattle. Tracy Edmondson is a writer in Dallas. Linda Holmes is a writer in Bloomington, Minn.

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