'WAXWINGS' | A review Newcomers make their way in uncertain times

The novel is British in style but American in theme.
By CHARLES MATTHEWS
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
"Waxwings," by Jonathan Raban (Pantheon, $24)
Jonathan Raban's "Waxwings" is a bittersweet comic novel about people adrift in the uncertain realities of a time and a place -- Seattle in 1999, just as fissures began to show in the dot-com economy.
Tom Janeway, born in Hungary but raised in England, teaches at the University of Washington and does commentaries for "All Things Considered." He and his wife, Beth, a "content provider" for a Web site, have a precocious 4-year-old son and a somewhat decrepit old house.
But then Beth moves out, into a condo nearer to the job that is beginning to consume her life. In a depressive funk, Janeway goes for a walk near the place where a young girl is abducted and finds himself a suspect in the case: Witnesses remembered him because he was smoking cigarettes -- as much a stigma in Seattle as in the Bay Area.
Meanwhile, a ship has arrived from China freighted with stowaways. Only one escapes: the infinitely resourceful Jin Peng, who takes on a new identity, calling himself "Chick" (his amelioration of the epithet "Chink"), and gets himself hired to do repairs on Janeway's house. (Janeway vaguely hopes this may persuade Beth to return.) Raban amusingly portrays the relationship that develops between the hustling Chick and the edgy Janeway, both of them aliens trying to strike roots.
British in tone
Raban, an Englishman, has lived in Seattle for more than a decade, and "Waxwings" is very British in style and tone -- he says he read a lot of Waugh and Wodehouse while writing it -- but very American in theme. Like Raban's masterly nonfiction books, such as "Old Glory" and the National Book Critics Circle award-winning "Bad Land," it's a keenly observant, ironic, yet at heart sympathetic exploration of what America has promised and provided.
"Waxwings" ends a bit raggedly, but it's reportedly only the first in a projected quartet of novels. If that's true, it's very good news indeed.