By the time you have finished this massive book, you may no longer be able to list the many different things it seems to be about; criminal justice, abnormal psychology, corporate finance, literary criticism, and high-stakes gambling are only a few of the subjects it takes in its stride. But at heart it is very simple. The first and shortest of its seven parts ends with the commission of a crime. The next five look at this from different points of view as events move slowly through bail and committal hearings to the eventual trial. The final section (the second shortest) gives the results of the trial and moves the story forward. However, the crime is really little more than a framework on which to hang the main intent of the novel, which is to explore the people drawn into its web. Although the book cover and other reviews have cited Akiro Kurosawa's movie RASHOMON, in which the same crime is seen from different points of view, this is not really the comparison here.* We know what happened; what we don't know are the motives, the back-stories, and the effects on everybody involved. By giving each of his seven sections to a different narrator, Perlman builds a truly multi-dimensional picture. But it is difficult to say more without giving things away. Perlman does not ever tell us who is speaking at the start of each section, for example; this is left for us to figure out. Even listing the cast of characters would reveal things that the author wants to save.The book should come with a user's warning: do not start this until you know you have time to read at least 150 pages a day, and so can hold the vast network of interconnections all in your head at once. Perlman could have made the novel more compact by eliminating his detours; it is almost impossible for a character to mention a subject in conversation without immediately triggering a discussion of it in detail. But a highly intelligent discussion; this is a book you read for the journey, not just the destination. Where else would you find a four page discussion between a prostitute and a psychiatrist on the physiology of climax, or detailed information on the mathematics of card-counting in blackjack, or one of the best explanations of Derrida's deconstructionism you might ever read? The latter is relevant because Simon Heywood, the protagonist, is a former literature student, whose hero is William Empson, author of the original SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY, a 1930 landmark in critical theory. Not only has Perman borrowed Empson's title and similarly constructed his book in seven parts, he also takes his idea that meanings can change according to context, and expressed it in genuine novelistic terms. This is why Simon so rails against Derrida, who took Empson's concept of ambiguity to the extreme of saying that no permanent meaning is ever possible at all. If that were so, novels would not have endings; but this one does -- not all neatly tied up with a bow, perhaps, but a very worthwhile outcome nonetheless."We were just as [he] had described us, separate people, all of us separate." So remarks one of the characters towards the end. Another writes in his journal: "For some time now the culture of every man for himself has so triumphed that any concern for the common good is referred to a psychiatrist." A narrative splintered into seven distinct parts, set in a world where dysfunctional marriages are par for the course and at least one psychiatrist plies his trade, might only have reinforced this theme of separateness. But the miracle is that it doesn't. By showing each character in isolation, Perlman only reinforces his or her humanity. And the ultimate message of the book is not separation, but outreach and understanding.*A better one might be Lawrence Durrell's ALEXANDRIA QUARTET, whose first three volumes explore the same situation from different but more or less simultaneous points of view, while the fourth moves forward in time.