Things to Be Lost

The disintegration of a middle-class African American family is the focus of Newton's second novel, a first-rate follow-up to his debut work, Getting Right with God. Narrator Randall Roberts is a rising young painter with a terrible secret: he killed his father when he was 12. Because his family covered up by claiming that the death was self-inflicted, Randall never served time; his punishment has been psychic rather than judicial. Outwardly, as we learn through the extensive flashbacks that comprise most of the novel, the Roberts family had seemed ideal. ``Ma'' was a community activist and educator, involved in a number of important causes, while ``Dad,'' to whom Randall was devoted, was a deacon at their local church. The trouble began when Dad started to spend increasing amounts of time alone in their attic, writing wild religious ramblings he claimed were inspired directly by God. From then, the family rode a downward spiral. Randall's sister fell in with a bad crowd and committed a savage act of violence; Ma, pushed by Dad, lost her moral compass; and, finally, Randall took his father's life, destroying the family unit in order to save it. In another's hands, all this could be relentlessly depressing, but Newton tells his tale in spritely prose, with a light hand and much humor, evincing a fine ear for dialogue. In the process, he accomplishes what Nabokov did for pedophilia in Lolita, making a patricide an understandable act with which readers can empathize, if not wholly approve. (Feb.)