Hangover Soup

""I met my husband in college, where it's hard to tell who's a true alcoholic and who's not,"" explains Faith Evers, the deliciously astute narrator of Redd's second novel, which describes life with Jay Evers, a popular jazz DJ, a gorgeous man and an unrepentant drunk. In between her duties as head tutor for the ""student-athletes"" at the University of Texas-Austin (she calls them, affectionately, her ""hired thugs""), Faith begs and nags Jay to quit drinking. After too many evenings ""when Jay's face began to lose its structure, when forming a sentence and a smile required incredible effort and a long period of rest afterward,"" Faith very reluctantly leaves him. Jay then launches a ""High on Wife"" alcohol-free marathon at his radio station, trying hard to win her back by serenading and cajoling her over the air waves. His sobriety marathon is upbeat and jubilant until he discovers that Faith has slept with a grad student. Distraught, he embarks on a drinking binge that leads to vehicular homicide and a jail sentence. Friends and family want Faith to get a divorce. ""Honey, that's what we call a starter marriage,"" says her aunt in New York. But Faith finds she can't stop loving Jay, in spite of his egregious faults. Then a chance meeting in a cemetery brings Faith into a tricky, unstable friendship with the husband of Jay's victim. Redd (Playing the Bones) intersperses comic relief when Faith works on grammar with her Texas sports stars, meanwhile guiding her story toward a horrifying climax and then to a sad but hopeful denouement. Expert pacing, pitch-perfect dialogue, fully dimensional minor characters and Redd's ability to depict the wondrous and the terrifying in everyday life create an immensely appealing narrative. Like the novel she inhabits, Faith Evers is wise, funny and utterly memorable. (Aug.)