The Dust Collector
Jennifer Lash
(Harvester 4.95 pounds)

          A plot summary of The Dust Collector is not only unfair but also unilluminating :  in a small Irish town an old man collects dust -- literally, in boxes and bottles -- and after being accused of child-molesting and theft, is passed from priest to police to loony-bin and eventually becomes a sort of celebrity.  It is a novel about existence, and Joseph Finn's attitude to his dust specimens -- his enjoyment of their different natures without any need to see them as useful -- is a metaphor for the author's attitude to the people and places in her little town, as she makes clear, in occasional meditations:  "The unnamed and inconsequential, like stems of grass between buttercups and rows of the faithful between the celebrant and the choir loft, are the support and consistency on which the irregularity of particular presence depends."  For once, a novel entirely in the present tense is not only acceptable, but treasurable.  The people are utterly particular, their Irish dialogue perfectly caught, and the author manages by the quality of her writing to make the reader revel in their particularity, without elevating this unifying idea to didactic boredom or repetitiveness.
 

                                              ----------Emma Fisher