BITE THE STARS

A mother traces her son's descent into violence and addiction in Canadian novelist Clark's quietly effective American debut, which begins somewhat melodramatically with the birth of Cole James Larson in the midst of a Tennessee tornado. Cole's mother, Grace, who provides the first-person narration, takes the tornado as an omen of the boy's problematic future, but the reality is that the absence of his father and Grace's decision to have her sister raise the boy (so that Grace can work to support them) have a far more profound impact on his life. Cole turns to petty arson to get the attention of his father, a married fireman named Jackson, and he terrorizes his schoolmates so much that the local mothers lecture Grace about her deficient parenting skills. Sliding ever further into delinquency as he grows up, Cole acquires a sexy, wild girlfriend, starts using heroin and turns to violent crime. Clark deftly captures Grace's panicky sense of helplessness when Cole's behavior first turns troubling, and her tone is unflinching throughout, even when Cole kills a cop and ends up facing the death penalty. Several elements of Cole's downfall border on cliché, and Grace's narration can be cloyingly folksy or trite ("Ellen was older than me by nearly four years, though seemed to me sometimes she had the wisdom of the ages"). Still, the unusual, well-observed maternal perspective on a young man's decline and the book's sympathetic look at the hard choices faced by single mothers may win Clark a U.S. audience. (Sept. 20)