cover image Reckless Driver

Reckless Driver

Lisa Vice. Dutton Books, $21.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-525-93863-7

Six-year-old Lana Franklin, narrator of this insightful, affecting first novel, lives with her older sister Abbie and their warring, unstable parents in Windfall, Ind. Their incessantly unsatisfied mother Ruth threatens to divorce their father Floyd, a WWII vet, who obsesses over the house catching fire, accuses Ruth of seeing other men and begins to sexually abuse Lana. Lana and Abbie invent a game called ``The Old Man's Gone for Good,'' and imagine ways their father might die; a car accident with a reckless driver becomes a favorite scenario. The driving theme recurs five years later at the novel's resolution. Vice generally sustains Lana's tone throughout, only occasionally slipping from childish remarks (``She's got what you call pee-neumonia'') to reflections that are more poetic (``pants and shirts hang stiff with ice... bare tree branches look like fingers scratching the blue sky''). Lana's confusion, her dread of her father and her need for his love are effectively and pointedly portrayed. Less successful are the interspersed third-person chapters chronicling Floyd's growing irrationality. Instances of obvious foreshadowing and awkward pacing aside, Vice's debut announces a singular and clear-toned voice. (Mar.)