The title I intended to write, which wouldn't fit: Barrel-Chested Man Leaves Broad-Shouldered Woman for Narrow-Hipped Boy with Breasts.

I find most fiction tedious or pretentious, so I'm always glad when another Tom Wolfe book comes along. There are few fiction writers today who can match Wolfe's vitality, the muscularity of his prose, or the warp and weft of his subplots.

The three main plot lines of A Man in Full involve Charlie Croker, an Atlanta real estate tycoon whose empire is on the verge of crumbling; the alleged rape of a white college student by a surly black college basketball star; and the descent into prison of a worker named Conrad in one of Charlie's warehouses. The most compelling characterization is of the barrel-chested Croker, a grizzled, gimpy former star running back. Croker isn't just a man in full, he's larger than life: crusty, crude and impatient, self-important but not haughty, racist and homophobic in a genial, teddy bearish way. Croker has replaced his sturdy wife Martha with a luscious 20-something trophy wife with long legs, silken hair, and plenty of Victoria's Secret negligees in the walk-in closets. Despite this arm candy, a plantation the size of Rhode Island, and enough uniformed black servants to staff General Motors, Charlie isn't happy. Trouble is a-brewing: Charlie's last development project, a huge office park, is only partly leased, and unless he can start paying off his bank loans, the weasels are going to repossess him down to the salt and pepper shakers on his Learjet.

Croker may be larger than life, but he's always believable. Conrad, on the other hand, tests our credibility mightily. He's poor, working class, uneducated but highly intelligent, virtuous, saves at least 4-5 lives in the course of the book, is freed from prison by a serendipitous earthquake, saves elderly pensioners from greasy mobsters, and is finally united with Charlie Croker, who should be his nemesis, in order to nurse him back to health. Basically he's a guardian angel. He belongs in a Victor Hugo novel....wait, he's suspiciously like Jean Valjean!

One subplot that Wolfe neglected, unfortunately, is the alleged rape. Who doesn't love reading about a pretty white coed, a bad-ass black hoopster, and the love that dares not speak its name? I kept waiting for this story, which simmered quietly underneath the others, to burst forth like a lanced boil, to shock, electrify, and titillate us. Instead, it petered toward an odd and unsatisfying resolution, oddly enough involving Charlie Croker. It could have been used to great advantage, like the hit-and-run scene in Bonfire of the Vanities.

Wolfe is at his most engaging when describing obnoxiously wealthy and powerful people doing fatuous and petty things in their natural habitats. In one of my favorite scenes, several high-rolling, powerbroking men are seated around a table at a crowded charity function. Their talk is so self-absorbed that the women in their group can't get in a word edgewise, and end up flattened back comically against their chairs, rendered invisible and inaudible.



Recommended: Yes