Irregulars

by Marilyn Jacovsky

Permanent Press, $16 hard

Irregulars is a fictional, campy first-person narrative about an artist-therapist-lesbian and her assorted patients and friends. Fans of New York angst may be taken with this book’s odd parade of abused humanity. Though described as an “edge of your seat thriller” on the back cover, the introduction of a serial killer seems almost tangential to this congregation of misfits. Imagery overshadows action, and clarity is sacrificed for an offbeat approach. We wait 17 pages to find out the name of the narrator (Cloe), and a description of the first murder comitted by the unknown killer is followed by unrelated chapters about Cloe’s trip to California. This novel could have been a satirical exploration of the troubled, gender-confused world of New York’s meat-packing district, or it could have been a chilling description of a cannibalistic serial killer. Instead, it is an uneasy blend, with a frightening paragraph about the butchering of Cloe’s neighbor, Greta, ending with the flip comment that “she was a takeout dinner.”

This article appears in October 8 • 1999.

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