Dying Unfinished

A turbulent mother-daughter relationship concerns Espinosa's plodding new novel. Both women tell their side of the story: Eleanor, the mother, is a classically unfulfilled postwar wife, married to a self-important artist and working intermittently as a secretary in New York while living in Westbury, Long Island, and pumping out babies, beginning with Rosa. Eleanor has no real pursuit of her own and finds her expression in affairs, while her husband, Aaron, dallies with students. Rosa grows up, and she contributes her version to the narrative: as the daughter of a controlling mother and distracted father, Rosa takes an interest in dance and longs for her parents' acceptance. A breakdown propels her into a mental asylum and later into marriage with a ne'er-do-well who takes an interest in her mother. Unfortunately, the prose is dull and the psychology too heavy-handed. (Feb.)