Naked Ladies

Despite the fact that the lives of its characters read like a catalogue of social ills, from rape to incest to AIDS, this novel succeeds as a portrait of one woman with a strong personality. Alta is unhappy in her relationship with her husband, Hugh. She dreams of finishing college and beginning a career as a counselor. Meanwhile, Hugh has been carrying on a homosexual affair since he was 17, and when his lover contracts AIDS he works up the courage to tell Alta. Her friends are suffering too: Katie has terminal breast cancer, Rita is married to a philanderer and also has breast cancer but is told she will live after a mastectomy, and Jackie's husband is not faithful either. The novel then skips ahead to March 1999. Alta, working as a counselor, is caught between her love for Jade, a weaver who has been raped, and Michael, a black colleague of hers whose brother was killed in a racial incident. While Alta's honesty and her open sexuality are refreshing, Villanueva ( Weeping Woman: La Llorona and Other Stories ) sometimes overloads even minor characters with problems, such as one of Jade's attackers, who sexually abuses his own children. (Jan.)