Publisher's Weekly 9/28/98
With a rare, understated surrealism reminiscent of John Hawkesís first novels, Best American Short Stories and Pushcart honoree Frederick groups offkey, densely described images within a plot that seems at once intently conceived yet dreamily unfettered.  The setting is an unnamed, presumably Central European country in which the government is cracking down on dissidents.  Refugees from the mountain district are camping near the airport, and rumors of civil strife float up to the capital from the south.  A lowly bureaucrat named Petir breaks out of his routine, with disastrous consequences, when he agrees to stand in for an old acquaintance, Eduard, in a meeting with Eduardís lover, Lera, a woman who has strong ties to the political underground.  Soon Eduard is found, dressed in womenís clothes, murdered in the refugee camp.  Meanwhile, Petir entangles himself in the case of a manic petitioner and, after an accidental encounter with his ex-wife, is forced to re-examine his past, especially the central fact of his childhood--his motherís murder of his father and grandmother and her own suicide.  The impressively conveyed theme of this eccentric novel is Petirís powerlessness over his fate.  One sense that, like a Kafka hero, he does not so much bring trouble on himself as act out a destiny that is at once ominous and absurd.  Frederickís sustained descriptive passages of Eduardís transvestitism[sic]or Eduardís childhood, for instance, are brilliant.  With this debut, Frederick proves that he is already, in the overused but necessary phrase, a writerís writer.