Christopher Bram, the prolific author of novels and screenplays, is
perhaps best known for his book FATHER OF FRANKENSTEIN, which is
about director James Whale and was subsequently turned into the
film Gods and Monsters.

His new novel is set among the New York theater crowd, from
Broadway hits and flops, to off-off Broadway experimentation, to
Gay Sex-Show Bars. It is a carousel of love (mostly failed or
unrequited) and sex (mostly unfulfilling). It is brimming with
colorful characters and outrageous situations.

Bram begins the novel by introducing his characters one by one,
each passing on the baton of the story to another character from
sketch to sketch. It's a conceit best exemplified by the movie
Slackers, which stayed true to its method --- you never meet the
same character again. It's tag-team storytelling. Bram only uses it
as a way in --- eventually his story builds by accretion and a
plotline develops, wavy and crisscrossing, his panoply of actors
and reviewers and wannabes becoming a vivid mélange.

At the heart of the story is Jessie, a secretary for famous British
actor Henry Lewse, who is now starring on Broadway, and her brother
Caleb, a playwright with one huge hit and one dismal failure on his
résumé. Jessie is in love with Frank, a director who
returns her affections but, well, it's complicated, and Caleb is
getting over a near-relationship with Toby, a part-time actor and
stripper. Henry is more of a cruiser of gay bars and user of phone
sex lines. The web of relationships is more complex than this, but
this lays the groundwork. That Bram can create so many strands and
make them all come together is a testament to his prodigious
inventiveness.

Everyone in this book is acting --- real life only appears around
the edges. And the book often seems like a stage setting; one
assumes this is intentional. And for verisimilitude, as he did more
heavily with FATHER OF FRANKENSTEIN, Bram mixes in some real names,
like Susan Sarandon, John Malkovich and Hope Davis.

The novel's title comes from W. B. Yeats's "The Circus Animals'
Desertion." Bram's "circus animals" perform admirably, though
sometimes in the service of a jerrybuilt plot. Bram's style is a
breezy and cheesy mix. There are passages of overheated prose as
purple as a blush, tired sentences and some bad dialogue. But for
the most part he moves the story along fluidly, and though one may
find passages that seem melodramatic, stale, even irrelevant, LIVES
OF THE CIRCUS ANIMALS keeps ticking and its readability is
unquestionable.