Invisible River

Scottish writer McEwen makes her American debut with her third novel, a treacly coming-of-age story. Eve has left her alcoholic father behind in Cornwall to study painting in London, where she befriends the flamboyant Bianca and the brooding Roberta, and sets her sights on a second-year sculpture student named Zeb. Eve struggles to find her artistic voice and suffers several scathing critiques by the school tutors, who tell her she's making "soufflé" when she should be cooking up "meat and potatoes." When Eve comes home from school one day to find her father passed out drunk on her apartment doorstep, she is saddled with both guilt at having left him to live on his own and anger at his intrusion into her new life. Her artwork starts to change as a result, but is no more warmly received. Instead of a story, McEwen gives readers a chronology of events, lackluster writing that seems more fitting for a high school drama, and a pile of melodrama. A story for a therapist, not a reader. (Feb.)