SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION by David B. Feinberg...

SPONTANEOUS COMBUSTION by David B. Feinberg (Penguin: $10; 226 pp.). In this highly praised novel, narrator B. J. Rosenthal delivers a droll, sometimes hysterical monologue about the problems of being alienated, gay, Jewish and HIV-positive in New York in the ‘90s. Rosenthal is a wounded veteran of a decade of amorous battles, and his rueful recollections of the promises and disenchantments of urban romance are sharply drawn and mordantly funny: “My love, the love of a callous and jaded cynic from the island of Manhattan, was like a snowball in hell surreptitiously gathering frost from the freezer of a poorly maintained Kelvinator in the devil’s locker room.” Although obviously intended for a gay audience, Feinberg’s often outrageous book will amuse liberal heterosexual readers --and precipitate heart attacks among members of the religious right.