A Changed Man by Francine Prose

A laser-sharp dissection of modern manners

In this intelligent and humorous novel, Francine Prose offers something gentler, more teasing than satire. Asking whether a man can really change, she exposes liberal do-gooders and the vulnerability of ignorant people who need someone to hate. Prose is not afraid to poke fun at the philanthropist who exploits his staff or to give a voice to the irredeemable racist thug, and packs her story with sharp one-liners.

Vincent Nolan, 32, enters the offices of World Brotherhood Watch, having fled the Aryan Resistance Movement. His conversion moment - triggered by an Ecstasy tab - entailed absconding with his skinhead cousin Raymond's savings, truck and medication. Now he has a plan. He wants to help "save guys like me from becoming guys like me".

Meyer Maslow, the charity's head, and his fundraiser, Bonnie Kalen, need a plan, too. Maslow's latest book has not done well, and stacks of tickets for the benefit dinner remain unsold.

Bonnie ("Flabby arms. Single mother of two") lodges Vincent in her suburban home, not Maslow in his New York penthouse where "if you slam into the walls, a Degas comes crashing down". Prose gives us the viewpoints of Nolan, Maslow, Bonnie and Danny (Bonnie's 16-year-old son).

Obsessively anxious, Bonnie wants to be a good person; she reminds Maslow's wife of "that ninny in Middlemarch". Vincent pops pills, rehearses anger-management strategies and takes to being "the Changed Man" like a duck to water. Maslow ricochets between self-pity and shame but still "insists on having it all at once: history, God, and expensive clothes". The wimpy, cynical stoner Danny made me laugh out loud.

Prose suggests WBW and ARM both have a whiff of the cult about them, lances chequebook philanthropists and shows the crassness of confessional television.

It's not only Vincent who wants reinvention. Maslow longs to get back to the man he was before his staff began "pickling him in their goodness", while lonely Bonnie imagines domestic bliss with the renegade ex-Nazi. A gala dinner, a near-fatal incident with nuts and an explosive confrontation on TV ensue. Though overlong, A Changed Man is wickedly entertaining, and Prose's ironic gaze consistently laser-sharp.