Rara Avis

A savvy, irreverent parrot defends its masters, the wealthy but doomed Romandias family, against charges of being ""superfluous"" in Weld's (Peggy: The Wayward Guggenheim) delicately evocative first novel, set in an exotic and unnamed South American country during the mid-1950s. Judged by a comical Traveling Circuit Court who appears at the Romandias mansion one day, the family is deemed a lazy clan of good-for-nothings. In addition to the philandering father and the seditious parrot, the crew includes the following: the benumbed mother; various loser uncles; a grandmother-aunt who trails a cloud of dust and ""wears chicken feathers on her eyelids""; and two spoiled daughters, demon-child Grita and seven-year-old Lita, who narrates the day's horrifying trial from a distance of years and through the fog of a fever. Soraida, the gorgeously plumed, anthropomorphically well-spoken parrot, is the only member of the family who can stick up for them, and she does so brilliantly. ""What kind of family is this?"" the magistrate demands, to which the bird replies: ""Dreamers all. Nothing more than dreamers. But nothing less."" Weld's surreal, playful satire brings to mind the work of Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, among others, while her lyrical restraint lends great charm to this promising first effort. (Oct.)