Clarise Cumberbatch Want to Go Home

The home Clarise longs for is in Guyana, which is also the domicile of first novelist Cambridge, widow of novelist and actor Julian Mayfield. Clarise has left her children there to come to New York City in search of her husband Harold, who fled their village with his ""sweet-woman.'' Clarise is single-minded in her devotion to Harold and in her attachment to the dreams his leaving shattered. Staying in an apartment with her old friend Mavis, whose green card she borrows, Clarise conducts her hunt for both job and husband as though she were back in the country. She talks to people on park benches, subways, buses and street corners, quickly distributing the 100 pictures of Harold she's had printed. Cambridge offers high humor in the clash between Clarise's old values and those that keep Manhattan going, but the laughs are edged with sadness. Clarise, with all her indomitable spirit, gumption and resourcefulness, can't find a man who doesn't want to be found, nor remain forever untouched by city grime. Cambridge tells Clarise's story in the lilting cadences of their homeland, so that reading this novel is a little like reading a song. It's a tuneful tale that stays in the mind. (March 16)