Adventures with Julia

This is a strange and unsettling book. In a series of discrete yet internally related episodes, the eponymous Julia tries to find her way through life and out of the troubling uncertainties of a monogamous seven-year marriage to Michael and the frustrations of playing the piano not quite well enough to develop a career. Many men arouse herdentist, piano teacher, psychiatristbut not until she visits her sister in Cairo is a manseemingly chosen at randomable to disencumber her of scruples and sentiment. Finally she abandons herself to purely physical mating, asking no questions of herself or her lover. They go to Paris, where he suddenly remembers his daughter's birthdaya bit of reality that sends her running home to a bewildered but not especially angry husband. Later, she walks away from the marriage, leaving the reader of this first novel to wonder if she'll be able to make it now that she's beginning to know she's alone. (October 20)