The Week

(Viking, 24.95) Sexuality, in its many strange and unknowable forms, is the subject of this surprisingly lovely first novel. Inspired by the life of an early 20th-century Danish painter, it's the story of Einar Wegener, a successful Danish landscapist with an alluring physical delicacy, and his wife, Greta, a not-so-successful American portraitist. When Greta asks Einar to pose in place of a missing female model one day, she opens a Pandora's box of gender confusion, as her husband seemingly splits in two: one day Einar, the next ''Lili,'' a beautiful, ultrafeminine young girl. Greta starts painting ''Lili'' and becomes the toast of Paris. What makes someone male and what makes them female? That's the crux of Einar's story, and while it could easily fall into Geraldo-speak, in Ebershoff's hands it's a beguiling mystery. A-