HIS MOTHER'S SON

Accomplished playwright and filmmaker Emmons tests chilly waters in this ambitious, unsettling debut. Protagonist Jana Thomas not only isn't lovable, she's barely tolerable. Oh, she's the kindest doc in the ER, where she met her carpenter husband, Cooper Johansen, but she's so jumpy and stern a mother, she freaks out other moms. The year Evan is six, his aggressiveness drives her to the edge. In the eyes of Cooper, his mother, Seretha, and Evan's teachers, the boy is normally rambunctious and it's Jana who's violent. Here's what Cooper doesn't know and the reader does: Jana's actual name is Cadence Miller. She slipped into a new skin when she was college-age and her brother, Varney, killed their parents, a teacher and a rival student. Jana can't be a laid-back parent like Beth and Walter Miller. She'd been the brilliant, disturbed Varney's only control, but she'd loved him too much; she hadn't been able to save him or his victims. She must do better with Evan. The last quarter of the book brings dying Varney back into Jana's life; her two identities fuse and she is permitted to be herself again. Emmons's prose is generally clear and precise, but a smattering of awkward descriptive phrases ("his breathing crackles with the kind of unpredictability of a package being unwrapped"; "air ticking noisily over saliva-furred teeth") muddy the tone. Despite these lapses, and the difficulty of sympathizing with Emmons's narrator, this is a notable debut, a rich read with a generous, redemptive ending. Agent, Deborah Schneider. (Jan.)

Forecast:Harcourt is strongly backing this novel with a national publicity campaign and a West Coast author tour. Foreign rights have been sold in Germany and France.