Gods without men

 by Haro Kunzu. In his assured and very entertaining fourth novel, Kunzru roams back and forth in time, homing in on disparate groups of seekers, all of whom converge on the formidable Three Pinnacles rocks in the Mojave Desert. The characters include a dissolute British rock musician seeking to escape a bad recording session in L.A. by ingesting hallucinogens, a small-town girl seduced by the bizarre beliefs of a UFO cult, a miner who mistakes the ill effects of mercury poisoning for a mystical experience, and a goth-girl refugee from Iraq. But at the center of the novel is a wealthy New York couple who become the focus of a media firestorm when their autistic four-year-old son vanishes in the desert. The hostile and accusatory e-mails and Internet posts directed at the couple in the wake of their son's disappearance are just one of a number of brilliant flourishes Kunzru employs here as he explores humans' desperate search for meaning whether it be through drugs, religion, computer programming, or UFOs within the chaos of life, both modern and ancient. Working a subject that might easily have invited a heavy hand, Kunzru instead delivers a lively and frequently thrilling version of the quest novel. --Booklist (Check Catalog)