The woman in the picture

SO many novelists have perpetrated smash-and-grab raids on the second World War that at this stage it seems unlikely anyone could possibly create something original out of such heavily plundered material. Howard Norman, one of the most interesting and underrated of US novelists, has achieved exactly that in his offbeat and atmospheric new novel, The Museum Guard (Picador, £12.99 in UK). As with his previous novel, The Bird Artist (1994), in which an unlikely killer describes his wayward mother's fall from grace and his response to this behaviour, much of the success of the new book is due to the wonderfully laconic narrative tone.

Norman is on his way to creating a stable of passive, deadpan narrators who find themselves in bizarre situations which they accept rather than question, until finally exchanging their unnatural politeness for a wild gesture which will decide the action.

In The Museum Guard, DeFoe Russet is an orphan whose life was upended when his parents died in a freak accident at a fairground. The tragedy leaves him in the care of his eccentric, sex-obsessed Uncle Edward, of whom DeFoe observes, "my uncle stumbled in about 11:00, maybe 11:30. His over-all dilapidation was more familiar than alarming. He had on rumpled black trousers, a white shirt, not tucked in, sleeves rolled up unevenly. Black shoes, no socks, and it was quite chilly out that morning . . . He had puffy, bloodshot eyes. His face looked swollen. His entire countenance was racked with drink and insomnia. Despite how wrecked he looked, here again was the inescapable fact of how handsome he was."

Edward quickly emerges as, if not the central, certainly the most interesting character; his reactions are the ones that count. He has his faults, is lazy, unreliable and given to womanising, but in his own way, he loves his nephew.

Years pass. It is 1938. DeFoe is now thirty and he and his uncle work as the unlikely security duo in the tiny local museum. Even as small towns go, Norman's Halifax seems a dead place. Life, such as it is, is centred on the local hotels. Nothing much happens. When not at work and not staying at the hotel that he calls home, DeFoe is busy trying to woo the lovely but clearly insane Imogen Linny.

She too has her problems. In moments when she is not occupied in battling headaches and warding off DeFoe's desperate advances, she tends the local Jewish graveyard. While DeFoe remains trapped in his obsessive romance with Imogen - "often I found I had to circle around her with words" - his uncle continues his daily routine of getting drunk, bragging about his sexual activities, teasing the hapless DeFoe about the stalemated situation with his girlfriend, and listening to the increasingly alarming news from Europe as delivered by Ovid Lamartine, a radio commentator who, for Edward, has acquired near-mythic status. All of this is done well - Norman is a relaxed writer, confident enough to draw us into his narrator's helpless though detached confusion, while in the background, chorus-like, a couple of easy-going locals contribute the odd remark.

Edward's banter provides the dynamic for much of the book. In a way, he is the truth-teller and brings a level of crazed understanding to the various dilemmas he observes. Nervously presiding over the scene is the initially shadowy Mr Connaught, who hired Edward long ago though well aware of his unreliablity. Norman establishes the sense of a relationship between these two based on mutual acceptance, just as he is all the while juxtaposing the sleepy Halifax with the increasingly dangerous situation in wartime Europe. Meanwhile, DeFoe, who derives comfort from ironing shirts, continues reporting the difficulty of winning Imogen.

Far more important, though, is the effect Lamartine's reports are having on Edward. True to the portrayal of him as a figure of benign menace, Edward has also acquired an ambivalent interest in Imogen which is upsetting to DeFoe and may or may not have any significance. As the characters drift through their days, Norman is deftly exploring the transforming power of art. Imogen becomes preoccupied by a painting, Jewess on a Street in Amsterdam. The picture is by a Dutch artist whose Jewish wife, the woman in the picture, died Kristallnacht, the night when Nazi mobs went on the rampage against Jews and their property. Standing before the picture, Imogen announces to DeFoe: "I think she is living a true life and I am not."

Having by then become interested enough in art to begin taking lessons in art history, she decides to enter the life of the Jewess in the picture, dresses exactly like her, and even assumes a strange accent meant to be Dutch. She is determined to go to Europe, where, as a Jew, she will be at risk, and eventually sets off for Europe in the company of Mr Connaught. His accounts of their bizarre trip are dutifully despatched to Miss Delbo, his girlfriend, an art historian who provides tours at the museum.

Imogen's visit to Amsterdam is not a success. Her presence outrages the grieving artist who resents her impersonating his dead wife. Even at moments of crisis, Norman sustains a deadbeat tone, so that the narrative achieves a surreal quality without ever resorting to special effects. As in The Bird Artist, this novel draws on visual imagery. It is also interesting to note that the character of Imogen - albeit with a final "e" - Linny appeared in an earlier Norman story, "Kiss in the Hotel Conrad" (1989).

Here, as elsewhere, Norman works through a series of motifs. His novels appear to be more concerned with random detail than deliberate fact, but this is a very deliberate way of drawing the reader into a strange but complete world. Suddenly events in Europe are brought directly to the museum when Lamartine the broadcaster arrives to give a lecture, and is assassinated by one of his listeners, who says in his own defence: "Ovid Lamartine gave us too much bad news." This is a novel of images and scenes and dazzling revelations, all calmly filtered through the precise but never quite ordinary vision of a unique writer whose fascination with the offbeat has created another quietly outstanding novel.