FICTION

CALLED OUT by A.G. Mojtabai (Doubleday: $22; 192 pp.) Years ago, J.A. Mojtabai, flirting with a fine theological point, postulated for a Roman Catholic canon lawyer a disaster in which a priest, ignorant of religious affiliation of the victims, nevertheless proceeds to administer last rites to all of them, anointing and granting absolution willy-nilly, as it were. What if the victim were an atheist, she asked, or a Muslim? The Catholic lawyer was abrupt in response: “Wasted oil and a wistful prayer.” The answer has haunted Mojtabai. Now, in a sort of exorcism, she has written a novel predicated on the scenario. Only it’s not really a novel; more an extended vignette, an abstraction, fascinating, full of earth tones and grace notes but lacking in structure. An airliner has crashed in a field just outside Bounds, a small town of “West Texas grit and grind”; a town with the patience of its flatness. Bodies everywhere and parts of bodies. Some survivors. In principle, the novel deals with the reaction of humdrum hamlet to calamity. In practice, it does not play out that way. Surely the town is defined by more than a priest, a postmistress, a retarded kennel keeper and a disillusioned drifter come home. In the end, though, the scant story belongs to the unnamed priest, a reluctant religious who finds his calling among the pilgrims to the site, relatives, friends, many who don’t speak English. “She talked--I listened. Maybe she thought I understood. Maybe I did.” A power like that deserves better.