Very Old Bone

This return to the pleasures of Kennedy's Albany cycle ( Billy Phelan's Greatest Game ; Ironweed ; etc.) is especially welcome after the comparative disappointment of Quinn's Book . The Pulitzer Prize winner is back in form with a complex but beautifully shaped saga revolving around the elderly scapegrace artist Peter Phelan's unveiling of a masterly series of paintings based on a 19th-century family tragedy. The event takes place at a rare get-together of the scattered and embittered Phelan-Quinn clan. Ancient loves are remembered, old passions rekindled and touching but never cloying reconciliations won--all seen through the eyes of Orson Purcell, Peter's bastard son, a confused writer who has fallen more than once into madness. Kennedy's crisp Irish American dialogue is a joy; his characters, particularly the sardonic Billy, the ravaged and virginal Sarah and the solid but endlessly surprising Molly, are brilliantly realized; and Orson's bursts of madness bring vivid gleams of fantasy. Bones offers the rare pleasure of a novel written with high literary skill that is a sometimes moving, often funny and always persuasive read. First serial to Playboy and Esquire; BOMC and QPB alternates. (Apr.)