Acceptable Losses

The chaos and freedom of the 1960s are encapsulated in an impassioned teenage love affair in this flawed but promising first novel. Young Joe has been deserted by his father, who leaves home for another woman. In another part of this small New Jersey shore town, Joellen's mother is killed in a car accident. As the years move by, the teens reel into alienation: Joe is buffeted by the violence of his alcoholic family, while Jo is emotionally isolated from her remote father. When the pair finally meet, the attraction overwhelms them, filling their empty hours with sex and a sense of longing that neither can properly express. Ziesk's portrayal of this desperate ardor is hypnotic, but she stumbles when she tries to spin the affair into some pacifistic victim of the Vietnam War: penniless Joe is drafted, and his lover back in the States is left to find her own way with another man. One wishes Ziesk hadn't sacrificed the novel's organic integrity for a patchwork attempt at political significance. Still, although she later smothers it, Ziesk briefly succeeds at conjuring the spirit of the 1960s, of freedom and of a first and tender love. (Jan.)