THE PARTNERSHIP.(Review)(Brief Article)

BARRY UNSWORTH. Norton, $13 paper (256p) ISBN 0-393-32147-9

The inner lives and secret loves of plastic pixie manufacturers animate the drab backstage of the tourist trade in Booker Prize--winner Unsworth's (Sacred Hunger; Morality Play) eloquent but predictable first novel, written in the 1960s but published only now in the U.S. Foley, a self-absorbed ex-photographer's model, and his stodgy, repressed housemate, Moss, run a cottage industry producing pixies for the giftshops of the Cornish coast, where they live. Foley dreams of one day expanding into the more rarefied niche of gilt--cherub making, and keeps a surreal, shrine-like room filled with prototypes. …