LONG ROAD TO A MIRACLE

By Martha Duffy

British comic novelist David Lodge has an endearing way of falling in love with his characters. In Nice Work (1991) he did a complete about-face, starting at a satirist's typical distance from his creations and finishing besotted with them. In Therapy (Viking; 321 pages; $22.95) he describes a classic case of postmodern depression. Laurence ("Tubby") Passmore is 58, securely married, the chief writer on a hit TV sitcom. But he quickly finds he has a trick knee, a fed-up wife and a bad threat to his job.

So far, so standard. What comes next is pretty familiar too. Tubby tries seducing female associates to avenge himself on his wife, and he fails miserably. His attempts are not enterprising, nor do they make very wry or funny reading. Lodge is best known for his blazing satires of academic life (Changing Places, Small World). Here he falters because he doesn't know TV operatives as well as he knows the profs he studied closely during his teaching career. Also, Tubby has a preoccupation with Kierkegaard, clearly important to the author but not to the reader.

Lodge rescues his story by taking a daring chance. Recalling a teenage romance with a pure Irish Catholic girl named Maureen, Tubby resolves to track her down. He finds her struggling along the pilgrimage road toward the famous Spanish shrine of Santiago de Compostela. In the 40 intervening years, she has married and had children, including a beloved son who was recently killed while doing relief work in Angola. Maureen is still a simple, good person. Through her, Tubby recovers his essential decency--plus a healthy knee and sexual potency. By subtle shifts in tone, Lodge has grafted a hackneyed case of worldly malaise to material straight out of an uplifting homily. What a conjuring act! Greater love for his characters hath no writer.