MARTIN AND JOHN by Dale Peck...

MARTIN AND JOHN by Dale Peck (HarperPerennial: $11; 228 pp.). Peck’s powerful first novel takes the form of a series of eerie fragments depicting disparate lives: loving families and abusive ones; wealth and poverty; sophistication and naivete. Only the names Martin and John link these diverse scenarios. In a dramatic coup de theatre, Peck melds his vignettes into a devastating portrait of a lonely man struggling to preserve love and hope in the era of AIDS. To exorcise the specter of that relentless killer, the unseen narrator declares, “I tell myself that by reinventing my life, my imagination imposes an order on things and makes them make sense.”