Morning, Noon and Night

A portrait of the artist as bemused dad, this account of a day in the life of the Gray family is by turns funny, meditative and self-absorbed. Gray (Swimming to Cambodia, etc.) may say he is ""really no good at making up stories,"" but he is brilliant at telling them. Parents will smile with recognition at his tales of sharing the bath with plastic action figures; of trying to control his anger at the children's rejection of a dinner lovingly prepared by his wife, Kathie, in favor of ""Lunchables""; and at the stream of existential questions posed by his son, Forrest (""Dad, how do flies celebrate?""). With the birth of his second son, Theo, Gray's recollection of how he and his brothers treated their own father is sharpened, providing a frame of family history for his present encounters with parenthood. The 18th-century churchyard across from Gray's suburban Long Island home inspires his sometimes morbid imagination, but his frequent flights of fantasy are always brought down to earth by the real demands of young children or the common sense of the apparently endlessly patient Kathie. In his stepdaughter, Marissa, Gray seems to have met his match for self-dramatization: ""We both thought that life was a rehearsal for the perfect story and the perfect audience."" Gray's own words about a woman who exposes her toeless foot for alms on a New York subway--that her story ""was no doubt partly an act, but was a good act and it deserved some money""--could equally be applied to his own work. Agent, ICM. (Sept.)