The Tale of Mark Levine

Book excerpt: As his plane touches down in Fort-de-France, Martinique, Mark Levine, thirty-five, single, professor of law at New York University, resident of the Manhattan's Upper West Side, modern orthodox Jew, semi-famous novelist, cynical judge of other people, malcontent, nonconformist, and closet drunk decides to kill his ex-fiancée's mother. He has ten days to plan it. Instead, on the accidental getaway with old pal Raphael Tahar Jerusalem police officer, buddy from university days past and obnoxious master of fornication Mark Levine meets 'Monica', an exquisite dancer who sports that Club Caribe tag. The mystical fog that wraps her inspires Mark to write his first fresh work in three years. On his final night at Club Caribe, she unexpectedly takes him to bed. He parts the club madly in love, but has not even learned her name. Writing begins back in New York, but forced by writer's block to Paris to complete the unfinished work, Mark Levine gets more than he bargained for. Mixed in a purloined manuscript of failed legal careers and literary hopes, contempt, discontent, alcoholism and the loneliness of unmet potential, moving from Caribbean getaways to New York's Upper West Side, to fashionable Paris to the desolate moonscape of ravaged Ramallah, filled with the author's witty and poignant insights into the journey to middle adulthood in late twentieth century America, The Tale of Mark Levine is Michael D. Lieberman at his very best.