First-time novelists almost inevitably write about the loss of innocence, as the first story many feel compelled to share involves the discovery that the world is filled with disappointment, contradictions, and hypocrisy. Sadly, most first-time novelists seem unprepared to write such stories. Apparently still reeling from the realization that lovers have a tendency to betray and parents have a tendency to disappoint, most loss-of-innocence novels express shock concerning subjects that most readers a few years beyond drinking age have long since gotten over. Which accounts for part, but by no means all, of the appeal of first-time novelist Marcel Theroux's A Stranger In The Earth, a refreshingly droll tale of a protagonist who doesn't so much lose his innocence as slip out of it. After the death of his politically radical grandfather, Horace Littlefair travels from his isolated English village to the forbidding city of London. Once there, he takes a job in a relative's fourth-tier newspaper and becomes unwittingly mixed up in a political imbroglio involving foxes, an ambitious prostitute, and a rock festival. A gentle, witty satire, Stranger makes up for what it lacks in forward momentum with colorful characters (notably a Tamil landlord with a yen for Scrabble), maturity, and a rare comic flair. Theroux might not yet be a great storyteller, but he clearly has the skills to flesh out any story he tells to the point where it barely matters.