Time-Sharing

The hapless lovers in this first novel are kept constantly off-balance before being consigned to oblivion. Jolene's only moment of public recognition comes when she is knee-deep in Jell-O at a dive that offers $25 to any female willing to Jello-O wrestle the club champ. At 18, Jolene (nee Janet) knows how to take itshe's been physically and sexually abused since childhood, first by her parents and then by a lover who has left her with a child. It's the child who keeps her going. Though he's badly impaired, she has named him Dandy, ""to let him know that he was okay.'' Artie, a 37-year-old petty thief (and a literary cousin of Ratso Rizzo), is a front-seat witness to her ring defeat and figures she's ripe for some sympathy; this grows into love, and a folie a deux that only a skilled writer could handle convincingly. Krawiec is well up to the challenge. Without descending into pathos, he brings to life two characters whose inchoate longings are as credible as Romeo and Juliet's. Artie and Jolene are so real they would be recognizable on the street. February