Fortunate Lives

The perilous shoals of domesticity--in particular, the tensions, misunderstandings and frustrations on which communication between parents and children founder--are addressed with consummate delicacy, grace and skill in Dew's third novel, which revisits the characters of Dale Loves Sophie to Death . The Howells family--Dinah and Martin and their children, 18-year-old David and preadolescent Sarah--have gingerly resumed normal life six years after the accidental death of the middle child, Toby. During one summer in their small college town in the Berkshires, the family prepares for David's departure for Harvard and copes with the intrusion into their daily routines of Netta Breckenridge, a seemingly needy but highly manipulative divorcee, and Owen Croft, the young man whose car killed Toby and whom Martin, a professor and editor of a literary magazine, has agreed to employ. During this transitional time, Dinah dreads David's leaving the tight family unit and puzzles over why he has become surly, cold and aloof; David experiences a wrenching rite of passage; and Martin finally comes to terms with the circumstances of Toby's death. Dew's gift is to write simply yet eloquently of the deep-flowing currents of domestic life, the barely acknowledged emotions that color even ordinary encounters and that glimmer under the surface of routine family activities. Though the events recounted in this narrative are minimal and mundane (except for a charming scene in which a puppet called Moonflower makes her annual appearance at a Fourth of July party), the narrative brims with insights about the parent-child relationship and the ``chemistry of families.'' Thoughtful, often provocative and radiant with understanding, the novel resonates with honest feeling. First serial to McCall's; BOMC selection. (Mar.)