All the Way Home

Self-congratulatory best describes the tone of this rambling, inconclusive tale in which a successful writer woos several women while coming to terms with the hardscrabble community in which he was raised. When 40-ish Michael Van Veldt returns in 1975 to Greenlea, N.Y., for the first time since he left as a teenager, he meets Inez, the idealistic daughter of a jailed political activist. Promptly falling for this looker (``not pretty; gorgeous. Striking. Instant-attractive''), Michael tries to bolster his activist credentials by feigning an interest in her father's plight. But the romance turns out to be just a lengthy tangent, and Michael next takes up with a curvaceous real estate speculator while trying to reestablish a relationship with Maria, his long-estranged ex-wife and fellow Greenlea-escapee made good (``The country buttercup had become a graceful lily.''). He also considers another old flame, ranking her looks ``somewhere between the new Maria and Inez.'' Aside from a few narrative detours in which Michael settles old scores, Hanyen's novel reads more like a swinging bachelor's little black book. Readers will have difficulty caring about characters who are defined primarily by their good looks and wealth-or lack thereof. (Jan.)