Ted, always the skeptic, takes the offer on a lark (and because he needs the money). Jane offers Ted one million dollars to spend time at Swafford Hall, the home of David's family, ostensibly to write a biography of David's father, Michael, but really to discover the healer's secret and share it with the world. But Jane believes she's cured-cured, in fact, by Ted's other godchild, a 15-year-old named David. Jane, a lovely 25-year-old with whom he lost contact when he and her mother had a falling out years ago, has leukemia and only three months to live. Ted, a bitter old poet, is having a drink at a local pub and checking out the women (``all of whom I wanted to take upstairs and spear more or less fiercely''), when he runs into one of his two godchildren. It's a bad sign when a story begins with a warning from the narrator about its 94,536 words: ``I've suffered for my art, now it's your turn.'' Fry seems as self-satisfied as his main character. Once again, from the author of The Liar (1993), plenty of penetration and unabashed chauvinism.
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