The Marriage Hearse

The narrator of this engaging first novel is Maurice Locksley, a Boston intellectual and writer. At 40, Maurice is vaguely dissatisfiedeverything has come too easily to him. In 1966, to avoid being drafted, he married and fathered a child, then divorced. Remarried to a lovely poet, he currently divides his time among the three women in his life: his wife, ex-wife and new mistress, an artist whom he met at his son's daycare center. Maurice, for whom self-analysis is akin to breathing, is now faced with midlife crisis. Should he leave his wife, whom he loves, for the excitement and intensity of a younger woman who makes no demands on him? The protagonist is by turns so cocky, so self-deprecating and so funny that it is impossible not to like him. Duberstein has created a hilariously accurate portrait of a certain kind of counterculture existence. Since this is the first of a projected three-novel cycle, readers should become acquainted with Maurice right away. (April)