Brigid Brophy, the Irish controversialist, classics scholar, champion of animal rights and vegetarian, continues her war on the 20th century. In Transit, her sixth novel, takes the fight underground, where it is more likely to be seen. The book is a highly cerebral contrivance that cannibalizes such literary conceits as puns, anagrams, typographical innovations, styles of alienation and cultural shock. These are then excreted as parodic wastes, which, in turn, become a further source of nourishment. With such transcendent offalness, Miss Brophy seeks a form suited to her view of the times.

Her central conception is impressive enough. The modern world is an airport waiting room, "one of the rare places where twentieth-century design is happy with its own style." Life beneath this vaulted metaphor is amorphous, ambiguous, oysterous. Culture, history, psychology, and even physiology are hopelessly confused.

So is Evelyn Hilary O'Rooley, the novel's bifocal, bivocal, bisexual...