Electric Brae

Although it gets off to a slow start, Scottish poet Greig's first novel will strike a chord with baby-boomers as it explores tangled, often tortured relationships against the backdrop of the death of idealism in the 1980s. Narrator Jimmy Renilson, a 30ish engineer who works on an offshore oil platform in the North Sea, has two passions: mountain climbing and tempestuous artist Kim Russell. With Jimmy's pal Graeme, also a climber, and Graeme's bisexual girlfriend Lesley, they form a quartet that tests the boundaries of love and friendship. Greig relates their personal and political struggles through a series of flashbacks, creating a bittersweet mood and leavening the symbol-laden text with irony. His characterizations are honest and complex; the dialogue comes alive through his sparing, pungent use of Scots dialect. Already acclaimed for two nonfiction works about Himalayan expeditions, Greig ( Summit Fever ) will win new admirers with this probing tale of contemporary Scotland, into which he has woven the age-old themes of love, death and madness. (Aug.)