-- Michael Harris

*Our Lady of the Forest

A Novel

David Guterson

Alfred A. Knopf: 336 pp., $25.95

"Our Lady of the Forest" is another virtuoso performance from David Guterson, whose first novel, "Snow Falling on Cedars," won the 1994 PEN/Faulkner Award. His gripping, darkly comic new novel marks an expansion of his vision, a deepening exploration of the richly layered realm of the Pacific Northwest that Guterson has come to own as surely as William Faulkner did his Yoknapatawpha County. Like Faulkner and the magnificent August Wilson, whose cycle of plays chronicles the African American community in Pittsburgh, Guterson sings the song of place with perfect pitch. In "Our Lady of the Forest," Guterson leads us into the still grandeur of the rain-drenched forest of northwest Washington, then unflinchingly dares us to examine the mysteries of faith and redemption. His uncanny sense of place is at work from the opening paragraph. His transporting novel balances on the tension between belief and despair without ever losing its sense of mystery.

-- Jane Ciabattari

*Pattern Recognition

A Novel

William Gibson

Putnam: 358 pp., $25.95

Cayce Pollard is the cutting edge of contemporary culture. An uber-cool young urban woman, Cayce is able to recognize hip trends before they take off, thereby allowing her marketing clients to "commodify" those trends and reap abundant profits. "It's about group behavior pattern around a particular class of object," Cayce explains in William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition," an intriguing novel of technology, art, marketing manipulation and mystery. "I try to recognize a pattern before anyone else does," Cayce explains, and then "I point a commodifier at it."

Gibson succeeds in bringing to light the subtle and sometimes frightening aspects of today's Internet culture. "Pattern Recognition" works compellingly on two levels: As an intriguing mystery with delicious vigor and bite, the novel lures readers into unfamiliar provinces and unforeseen situations to solve the problem at hand. On a deeper level, the tale is a social commentary, taking a long, hard look at the monoculture in which we live: "whatever it is that gradually makes London and New York feel more like each other, that dissolves the membranes between mirror-worlds."

Combining old-fashioned storytelling techniques with a recognition of yet-to-be-defined patterns, Gibson's tale is a robust inquiry into the many (and often veiled) ways that marketing shapes the world in which we live.