Light of Common Day

Former publisher John Herman has followed up his admired The Weight of Love with the kind of book that is more often a first novel: a bittersweet coming-of-age story about a youth at a tony prep school coming to terms with life, love and the death of his father. Paul Werth is a bright boy, good at baseball and well up in his studies, who is inclined to take people too much at face value: a girl who comes on to him out of her own deep dissatisfactions; a flashily sophisticated friend who tends to call people Bambino (the year is 1962); a truly kindred spirit who likes to pretend she is a femme fatale. Overriding all these concerns--as well as a quaint fuss over drugs at the school--is Paul's anguish over the sudden death of his much-loved father. He died a disappointed man, and his dying attempts to warn Paul about life's perils have made the boy profoundly uneasy. Much of this can hardly fail to be evocative, and sometimes, as in Paul's memories of a childhood girlfriend who succumbed to leukemia, it is truly touching. There's no denying the fact, however, that for all Herman's quiet skill as a writer, most of it is also crushingly familiar material. Perhaps this was his first novel, after all. (May)