Lost In The City Of Lights — Richard De Combray

This elegantly clever novel of love and identity lost and found in Paris, the city of light, is a playfully sophisticated delight with subtle undertones. Kevin Korlov, an American expatriate sculptor suffering from a loss of inspiration, supports himself as a translator, radio announcer and English teacher. Brusquely dumped by his girlfriend, whose legacy to him is an aging dachshund named The General, Kevin resorts to the ``Minitel,'' a computer linkup between the amorous lonely who guard themselves behind ``pseudos'' or aliases that range between the poetically romantic and the pornographic. As ``The Invisible Man,'' Kevin is intrigued by the archly provocative ``Treasures of Tenderness'' or ``Woman Under Silk,'' aka Lea. Despite premonitions of diaster, Kevin falls wildly in love with the dramatic and stunning Lea, a woman of uncertain age. A weaver of fantastical fables who refuses to be grounded in pedestrian reality, or to commit herself in love, Lea persuades the bewitched Kevin to fly to Marrakesh with her. Despite some abrupt and jarring shifts from Kevin's point-of-view to Lea's, de Combray ( Goodbye Europe ) has written an accomplished, entertaining and wryly amusing novel distinguished by sharp dialogue, acute perception and ultimate moral seriousness. (Sept.)