LOVE CRAZY.("A Ship Made of Paper")(Book Review)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 03-MAR-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Idealism, hubris, and hypomania in about equal measure characterize the thirty-six-year-old protagonist of Scott Spencer's new novel, "A Ship Made of Paper" (Ecco; $24.95), who embarks upon a reckless love affair with a young wife and mother:

History in one corner and Love in the other? Fine. Ring the bell. Let the fight begin. Love, he thinks, will bring history to its knees.

By "history," Daniel Emerson means the rift between the races--he is white, and she is black--which is a consequence of slavery in America; by "love" he means the intensity of the passion he feels for Iris Davenport, no matter what the consequences for others.

The funny-romantic boast of the bluesy song "Just to Be with You" ("On a ship that's made of paper / I would sail the seven seas") is the unspoken mantra of mock-heroic Daniel Emerson, whose romantic yearnings precipitate a Grand Guignol of seriocomic happenings. Daniel, who has moved back to the place of his birth--the fictitious Hudson Valley town of Leyden, New York--is a richly drawn character, alternately exasperating and appealing, a good-natured, tirelessly smiling, and affable adult with the emotional needs of a child....

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