Knute, and Knute Again

Working through the personal importance of childhood reminiscences in a way that seems to disregard the needs of readers, this first novel about a Midwestern boy with a lonesome mom is the invention of a narrator, himself fictional, who pokes in and out of this book with his own uninvited analyses and self-disclosure. Protagonist Knute Pescador is the son of an overly busy Italian-American restaurateur and his Protestant wife who tries to compensate for her husband's absence by demanding an inordinate share of her son's time. Moving between the vaguely portrayed, unnamed hometown and later apartments and school campuses, the narrative recalls the boy's irritation with his sad mother, his unanticipated transformations from serenity to anger and his adolescent discovery of sex, all of it depicted in an overly precious manner. (April 30)