Hologramic IV

She's a sane, level-headed woman who's killing an hour or so in a museum. But Roslyn Petrocelli is in for the shock of her life when she draws close to an oversized painting there. The painting is called Hologramic IV and it holds within it scores of people who are somehow alive-living, breathing people whose stories lure Roslyn into a new reality. She has always asked of life, "Tell me a story" . . . and the painting readily obliges. But Roslyn does more than simply observe each fascinating story as it unfolds. She finds that she is actually a participant in the lives held within Hologramic IV. She has shed her psychic skin to become those other people-to experience in the flesh their loves, their hates, and likely their destinies as well. When she first approaches the painting that morning in a "second-tier art museum in a second-tier city north of Boston" Roslyn stutter-steps back in shock and actually falls to the floor. It's at that precise moment that her world truly changes. It has shifted on its axis and drawn her into a new reality-a transitional reality between living and dying where "Tell me a story . . ." is now her sole task. And she is both storyteller and audience.Roslyn sees that the painting is now "preternaturally sharp and crisp and defined." She knows in an instant the rich fabric of each individual life in the painting-their likes, loves and hates; their histories, their futures, their needs and wants. She feels the stories of each person building within her mind and, because of that new onslaught of so many lives presented in such minute detail, she feels faint again.Abruptly, a museum guard, Otis Orlasky, is there to rescue her. He is the first of the new people to come into her new life over the days and weeks to follow. There will be many more. There is Natasha, the super-model who lets Roslyn share with her her new lover, a man who was once a photographer and may now be a contract killer. There is Philip Duquense, an ex-cop who's now become a techno criminal. There is Captain Armand deGarnette, a lowly cockroach of a cop who begs to be squashed like the scuttling insect he is. There is Georgia Cross, a brilliantly flawed young woman who must flee from life in order to endure it. Finally, there is the woman who comes to be known as Eve/Etc., a woman so exquisitely alluring that both men and women are enraptured as she hints of magical things to come.All these new people are busily telling their stories to Roslyn, but it doesn't stop there. It turns out that some of the people she's always know, like her husband, Julius Petrocelli, have many more stories to tell her than they've ever hinted at. She learns that Julius, for instance, has been with hundreds-no, make that thousands-of other women throughout the time they've been married. And that Otis Orlasky is more an artist than a museum guard. And that commonplace, everyday objects hold within them even more stories for Roslyn.The shocks come one after the other for Roslyn Petrocelli until, by the end of her story, she is almost ready for the greatest shock of them all, where "perhaps someone has squeezed the universe into a ball to roll it toward some overwhelming question." For it is now her choice. As Eve/Etc. tells her, "It's your decision, Roslyn, just as it's always been, just as you crafted the story long ago.""Hologramic IV" is a multifaceted novel that will entertain, delight, and quite possibly entice you into a fuller appreciation of your own life.