Dust Devil on a Quiet Street
It begins in the wake of 9/11 when Richard’s friend Mags starts seeing dead people, victims not only of the Twin Towers but of earlier tragedies as well. But, then, Greenwich Village is full of legends and ghosts, as is Bowes’ novel, which focuses on the present and on his career working at a university library, as well as on his past, which was filled with indiscretions and abuses involving drugs and indiscriminate gay sex. “You know where the drugs are, where the gay is!” an acquaintance once told him. A theme of magic runs through Bowes’ novel, uniting its disparate elements. Fourteen previously published stories were used in this novel, and it shows in the book’s episodic structure, which contains stories within stories. Acknowledging the influence of nineteenth-century writer E. T. A. Hoffmann, Bowes has made himself a character in his novel, conflating fiction and memoir, mythologizing both himself and the literary and artistic characters about whom he writes. But it is Greenwich Village, filled with local ghosts and small gods, which remains the most memorable character in Bowes’ latest exercise in speculative fiction. --Michael Cart