Marine Life

This graceful debut collection of eight connected stories offers multiple impressions of the fears and tyrannical responsibilities the past can impose on the present. The vicissitudes of a troubled blue-collar Vancouver family are narrated in sharply evocative prose by Adele Nordstrom, who chronicles a cycle of emotional neediness and despair. Like her step-siblings Ray, Irene and Joyce, Adele has been profoundly affected by her parents' failed marriage. Their mother June, a cocktail-lounge pianist, takes newspaper filler as sacred truth: ``Who you sleep by determines your dreams,'' she announces at her son's birthday party. Adele, now a teacher in New York, still turns to June, who ``wants her intuition and skill to rub off on her daughter somehow.'' Alcoholism, incest, promiscuous sex, madness, terminal illness and suicide are all aspects of this family's heritage. The novel ends on a tragic note, with Adele swamped by guilt, yet concluding that ``a bad marriage is better than none.'' Svendsen has created knowable characters with familiar failings, and her quiet language has power and authenticity. ( July )