The Beginner's Book of Dreams

Elizabeth Benedict. Bantam, $8.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-553-34703-6

Overweight Esme Singer eats her way into adolescence--as her beautiful, divorced mother boozes and searches for the perfect man, and her irresponsible father promises the moon but delivers nothing. ``Benedict's masterful second novel evokes the anxieties of childhood and adolescence with rare clarity,'' stated PW. (June)

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