Though relatively unknown in the UK, Jill Ciment enjoys much success in the USA, where she lives and works. Her last book, Five Flights Up, was turned into a film, starring Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman. Act of God is Ciment's seventh book and fifth novel. It features four women, whose lives painfully collide when a luminescent mould infestation spreads through the building they share. The fast-paced narrative switches between them.
Jewish twins, Edith and Kat are 65, unmarried and living together in a rent-controlled apartment in Brooklyn. They are trying, with little success, to publish their late mother's celebrated newspaper advice columns. Edith is a retired librarian, staid and responsible, while her sister has led a shambolic bohemian lifestyle.
Vida, their landlady, is a middle-aged actress, whose lack of roles prompts her to appear in a TV ad for a sexual enhancement drug, which turns her into a minor celebrity, attracting unwanted attention and even fewer acting parts. Ashley is an 18-year-old Russian au-pair, dreaming of a better life, who is discovered hiding in Vida's wardrobe, from where she has been stalking her.
When an iridescent mushroom appears in the twins' wardrobe and Vida's apartment, panic spreads through the building, leading to them all becoming homeless.
A state of emergency is declared in Brooklyn, as the infestation spreads throughout the city.
Eventually, tragedy befalls the twins; Vida manages to get the part of Goneril in an open-air production of King Lear; and Ashley finds brief sanctuary in a millionaire's penthouse. Rain brings floods to New York along with various other biblical allusions to plagues and punishment.
Ciment packs plenty of action and ideas into this slim (179-page) book, perhaps too much and too many. As she attempts to juggle the various storylines and genres, the mood shifts from comic fantasy to tragedy, to sci-fi - none of which is convincing enough in itself.
Act of God contains flashes of fine writing, psychological insight and the story has a strong moral heart. It shows how easy it can be to lose all you have when circumstances conspire against you.
Although Ciment's novel is essentially a comedy, its humour relies too heavily on Russian stereotyping.
Yet, despite this - and the fact that the rather cosy, sentimental plot is overloaded with coincidences - there is a truly shocking twist at the end of it all.
