Stuck on You

" ' I'm speaking !'

" 'Sorry, it's actually a bell that tolls. Tolls for thee , my mistake. "Send not to ask for whom -- " '

" ' Shut up ! . . . I'm not allowing you to get away with this. We're here now. It's the world. I don't know what your hang-up is, but I'm jumping in.'

" 'You're the one with the hang-up, pal.'

" 'No, Bunny, you're the one with the hang-up.' "

Meanwhile, Ludmila's family bickers on and on, too, about how they'll raise money, how they should bury the grandfather and how they might continue to cash his checks. Here's the grandmother screaming at Ludmila's brother, in a passage that could appear at almost any point in the novel:

"You have an entire zoological garden of questions today . . . when, in fact, there's only one tiny bald question to be asked: where is the money from the tractor? Perhaps, if you show us it, we might feed you. But remember this . . . again it was your mothers who had to feed your mouth like a naked bird! Because even with the strength of a square hammer you're too stupid to feed yourself or your family! Our teeth are lost and broken from chewing your food for you. . . . You're worse than a legless dog!"

Yes, there's a certain linguistic energy here, but it drains away through constant repetition. And who wants to satirize starving, desperate peasants in the Caucasus, anyway? As the Heath brothers wend their improbable way toward Ludmila, the story involving her family sinks lower when an official arrives to investigate the grandfather's pension check. There's some belabored comedy involving his body -- He's not dead; he's just a sound sleeper! -- and lots of parody of Soviet-era bureaucracy that might have seemed wry in the 1950s. All this silliness culminates in a grisly finale of slaughter and rape.

Pierre claims that the native dialect Ludmila speaks in Ublilsk is "the language most exquisitely tailored to the expression of disdain." I could have used her help. ·

Ron Charles is a senior editor at Book World.