The Yid -- real name Jack Konar -- believes that he is the Chosen of the Chosen, and that it is his duty to build a spaceship to bring the Chosen people to another planet upon the coming of the Meschiach. Lea, who he calls "shiksie," is helping his project, even though, as a "shiksie" she is not eligible to join him. This is taking place in an abandoned section of a Sears and Roebuck. Lea also talks to her cat, who isn't too happy with her misuse of her powers. And she keeps avoiding the good attentions of her landlady, whose daughter died years before, and who clearly is looking for a sort of replacement.

All this is goofy enough. And for sure there is an "out" available -- Lea and Jack are both pretty damaged people, and maybe she is just a messed up runaway and he's a deluded drug dealer. At this level the story still attracts -- Lea's personal story is affecting. We worry about her: Jack is not always a good influence (the killings seem at first to be taken rather too lightly, for one thing); she has a distressing past; she needs to decide to reconnect with the world. And, eventually, with her long lost brother. But we can't, in the end, ignore the fantastic parts, which spiral from a plot to use her power to fix a boxing match, to a realization that her landlady may be a tool of Satan, to an eventual duel with that being himself, as the End of the World approaches.

I enjoyed this novel, but I don't think it ranks with Fintushel at his best. (My personal favorites are the sadly neglected "Milo and Sylvie" and "Auschwitz and the Rectification of History.") The main problem is that the fantastical conceit -- Jack's part of the story, about the Chosen and the Meschiach and the spaceship -- simply doesn't convince, and despite some clever and bravura description, it didn't interest me. By contrast, Lea's story is quite affecting, and her personal growth, by the end, seems real and earned. This will be one of the best first novels of the year in the field -- and don't forget to try not just this novel but Fintushel's shorter works.