In turn of the century America, sixteen year old pianist George Carole has run away from home and joined vaudeville for one reason: to find his father, Heironomo Silenus. When he finally tracks down his father's troupe, he comes across others on their trail, for more nefarious reasons. Silenus's troupe carries with them pieces of The First Song, "the art that called Creation out of the darkness and forged the world" (p. 139). Performed in the fourth act of their vaudeville show (titled "The Silenus Chorale, melodies sure to melt the heart" (p. 27)), it is the only thing that stands against the wolves, agents of a nihilistic darkness that wishes to destroy all of creation. Yet day by day, the First Song seems to be losing its power to rejuvenate the parts of the world that are fading into the said darkness, and to protect the troupe from the wolves that seek to devour them.

Bennett's ambitious third novel works best when it not just acknowledges, but revels in, the absurdity of both its premise—a vaudeville troupe traveling across America, for their final act recreating the creation of the world itself—and its characters, most notably George, whose foolishness and arrogance seems particularly Wodehousian. There is his unsuccessful wooing of proud and vulnerable Colette—or rather, "Her Highness Colette de Verdicere, a beautiful songbird of Persian royalty" (p. 27)—who wants nothing to do with him; his attempts to seem older and more sophisticated by wearing tweeds and waistcoats that "men of standing wear" (p. 181), pretending to be an expert on whisky he's never drunk, music he's never listened to.

Another related strength is how Bennett skillfully juxtaposes the banal and profound, the beautiful and horrifying. These dichotomies are reflected in descriptions such as "In the weak starlight it was a lonely, disquieting place, snow-decked and littered with old industrial equipment and rusting chains, and splintered wood that sometimes had the look of bones" (p. 142), as well as in dialogue and major plot points. Some of the most brilliantly disturbing scenes involve Kingsley, the troupe's lead act, "and his astounding PUPPETS. Through his mechanical WIZARDRY and SHOWMANSHIP, they will speak for us" (p. 27)—puppets who call Kingsley father and insist that they are real. Others involve a philosophical and perfectionist wolf in a red coat, obsessed with researching Silenus's troupe in a quest to understand what it truly means to live.

The weakest parts come away from the vaudeville, when the novel indulges in derivative genre tropes. When Silenus needs help in collecting the last pieces of the First Song, the troupe pays a visit to the Fairy Court, whose depraved excesses make pre-Revolutionary French aristocrats seem Puritanical in comparison. George gets lost in a storm and stumbles upon the Cardinal Winds, Gaiman-like personifications with one-dimensional characterizations. One of them, Zephyrus, falls for George in a manner which makes it difficult to see her as a seasoned, powerful Cardinal. And of course there is the underlying good-versus-evil battle between the troupe and the wolves. Yet with one notable exception, these wolves never seem half as terrifying or compelling as Kingsley's puppets, or even, at times, Silenus himself. And it is difficult to accept that the fate of the entire world hinges on the troupe's actions, for they never travel or perform anywhere but America, and there is no indication that, in their current incarnation, they ever have.

Furthermore, the novel presents an anachronistic picture of America itself. Teenagers like George, who grow up sheltered in conservative small towns, are completely unfazed by cursing. Religion seems to play no significant part in the society. And perhaps most tellingly, when George's crush, Colette, reveals that she isn't, in fact, a Persian princess, but is actually part black, he isn't the least bit angry or repelled, just shocked that she would lie. As he says to Silenus, it doesn't seem right for her to seem ashamed about such a thing.

It should be noted that the scene where Silenus and George are discussing Colette highlights a primary theme of the novel—the roles that people play, how they have to pretend sometimes to survive—and reinforces the relationship dynamic between George and Silenus, with George acting the part of the wide-eyed ingenue to Silenus's angry, cynical man of the world. Yet what are the chances that a white teenager at the turn of the century—a time period that saw more black Americans lynched than any other, when laws were passed to further disenfranchise black Americans and white paramilitary organizations routinely terrorized rural populations—not only has no racist reactions to learning that the woman he adores is part black, but is also absolutely clueless about why she would wish to distance herself from such a heritage?

Another weakness of the novel is its heavy handed tell-not-show narratorial asides. Colette became interested in performing when she went to the theater, "'and there was a comedian playing there. Everyone had crammed in to go see him. He was the act to see, you know? And as it turns out, he was colored. And not just colored, but not even in blackface,' she said, referring to how colored entertainers were expected to perform in the same makeup that white performers wore in minstrel routines" (p. 305). The explanation of blackface is remarkably clumsy, both because most readers already know (or can intuit) what blackface is, and also because elucidating it breaks the flow of the narrative. An even more egregious example of the author's patronizing heavy-handedness is the following paragraph:

George did not know this, but the human mind is very good at recontextualizing the world when it stops making sense. When a person encounters an event that goes beyond their normal five senses, the mind filters the information and changes it so that the event is experienced in normal, understandable terms. In essence, it creates a realistic metaphor to relate what's happening. Sometimes the metaphor can be very different from the normal world, like suddenly switching things so it seems as though you are at the bottom of the sea; but then such changes may be necessary, if the event experienced is great enough. (p. 268)

This paragraph follows George's first glimpse of the beast that controls the wolves, who wishes to devour all of creation, one glimpse of whom can drive a person mad. It's a tense, pivotal scene before the narrator steps in to lecture the reader directly on pop psychology.

Yet despite some missteps, the novel largely excels at characterization. The roles that Bennett's characters play, and their growth and change, are fascinating and unexpected and often quite touching. There is cynical, charismatic Silenus, whose story reads like a modern Greek tragedy. When George says that Silenus can't be just a performer, because no other performer can do what he does, Silenus replies, "You're wrong, kid. I am just a performer. I'm just putting on a show you haven't seen before" (p. 88). And he is the most consummate performer of the entire troupe, specializing in illusions, misdirections, and sleight of hand, brilliant and Machiavellian enough to lead others to play the roles he wishes. His own performance has lasted for longer than most suspect, driven by hubris on a quest whose true purpose isn't revealed until nearly the end.

Then there is the rest of the troupe: gentle, enigmatic Stanley, who takes George under his wing, serving as a buffer against Silenus's harshness and indifference, and who has some of the most poignant, heartbreaking scenes of the novel. Professor Kingsley Tyburn, as gloomy and creepy as an Edgar Allan Poe novel, whose character arc and plotline are a masterpiece of horror. Strongwoman Fanny, who bends steel as if it were rubber, and has forgotten how to dream. The fiercely beautiful and vulnerable Colette, who seeks to lose herself in her role as a Persian princess, yet can never quite manage to fool herself as she fools her audience. And then, of course, there is George, the newest member of the troupe. The boy who runs away from home, leaving everything he's ever known on a quest to seek out a father that left him behind, a father he's never known. A father with whom there is no tearful reunion, who from all appearances, wishes that there had been no reunion to speak of. And when George is swept into Silenus's quest, the stage is set for his transformation from a foolish, arrogant Wodehousian extra into something more.

But while the characters are this novel's strength, its biggest flaws are, perhaps, those it shares with its most prominent character—heavy-handedness and hubris. It creates a universal, all-encompassing mythic arc from scratch, one which fails to cohere if examined too closely. Its narrative wavers from startling, engrossing cleverness—sweeping me up, leaving me eager to know what happens next—to a story whose trappings are trite, with unnecessarily verbose explanations, and illusions that are quite illusory. Perhaps most interesting is how the novel can be taken as a meta statement on itself. Bennett's main themes are of the world being a stage, the search for the truth behind that facade, and the slow realization that it is not that eternal truth—that which is behind the curtain, constant from play to play—that matters, but rather the passing play on the stage, the roles that each of us have undertaken to act until the curtains come down. So it is, perhaps, apt that when the curtains were metaphorically swept aside, the mythic arc explicated—the explanation of the First Song, the description of the ravenous beast that lies beneath Creation, the concluding dramatic face-off against the said beast—I found the novel the least compelling, even while its characters, brilliantly flawed and contrary and interesting, remained memorable and moving.

Guria King lives in the US (and occasionally in other places). Sometimes she writes; most often she procrastinates. For more, follow her on Twitter, @guriak.