What if a skinhead shows up at a famed Holocaust survivor's office,
not with a gun, but with contrition? What if said Holocaust
survivor's prematurely dowdy, divorced assistant takes in the
skinhead to hide him from the Aryan Resistance Movement he now says
he wants to discredit? What if their story is told from close to
each of their ambiguous human hearts? You have Francine Prose's new
novel A CHANGED MAN, that's what.

Vincent Nolan is the repentant skinhead, a good-looking (despite
the tattoos) young man in his early thirties, fresh from camping on
his cousin Ray's couch. Meyer Maslow, the celebrated, aging
activist who directs a non-profit aimed at freeing dissidents and
righting wrongs all over the world, has been expecting someone like
him, all the more reason for Bonnie, his adoring assistant, to
marvel at his prescience. Bonnie has channeled her feelings of
rejection from the breakup of her marriage into intense belief in
the rightness of Maslow's mission.

When Meyer suggests that Vincent stay with her --- after all, he
can't go back to his neo-Nazi cousin's couch, can he? --- she
agrees with only a shiver of concern for her two young teenaged
sons. Vincent talks a good game, and Bonnie wants to trust him, but
she's a worrier by nature. She doesn't need the aggravation and
feels guilty about it. And by that time, the reader knows that
Vincent's duffel contains more in the way of dirty laundry than
simply clothes: it also has a hefty supply of Vicodin, and $1,500
of drug money taken from Ray and his buddies.

There are two main sources of tension in this accomplished novel by
the prolific Ms. Prose. One comes from wondering whether Vincent
really is a changed man, and Vincent, it seems, is as much
in suspense as we are. The other comes from the author's convincing
revelations of each character's hopes, fears, self-doubts and petty
vanities. While she visits nearly all of the main characters'
heads, she does so one at a time, and thoroughly evokes their
distinct voices and thought patterns as they mentally skewer each
other and themselves. The writing is crisp and witty. Here's
Bonnie, on Maslow: "Meyer insists on having it all at once:
history, God, and expensive clothes. He demands his right to wear
Armani while using a mystical tale from Rabbi Nachman to make a
point about former Soviet bloc politics or hunger in Rwanda."

The narrative builds to several interesting climaxes. Vincent turns
out to have a flair for public speaking and becomes kind of a weird
father figure to Bonnie's two boys. Bonnie and Vincent contend with
the nature of their growing affection for each other and with
Vincent's allergy to nuts. Maslow wrestles with his own ambition
and his jealousy of the younger man. The ending is satisfying
without being sentimental.

Not a book about fairy tale transformations, A CHANGED MAN examines
each character's capacity and motivation for doing the right thing,
and the sometimes tenuous moral reasoning they use to figure out
just what that is.