Catch the Wind

Although the author is the daughter of writer David Garnett and grandniece of Virginia Woolf, her first novel does little to augment the Bloomsbury legend. Its primer-style prose, (a description of one character's food consumption reads: ""It was hot. He was hungry. That was all'') barely manages to evoke a series of episodes in the life of a young English girl, Catherine, who has been raised in virtual isolation by an eccentric uncle. Their only visitor is Catherine's handsome cousin, Tara, who marries her on her 17th birthday. When he dies, weeks later, in a boating mishap, and her uncle is subsequently killed in a fire, Catherine begins a despairing journey that terminates in a psychiatric clinic. She is rescued by a writer friend of her late husband's who takes her to an island where she comes to grips with some secrets in her past and writes a play that gives her a handle on the future. Clearly autobiographical in inspiration, the novel never coheres into successful fiction. (March 9)