The Adventures of Stout Mama

Written in prose-poem form but lacking the gracefulness that an author like Sandra Cisneros might have imparted, these brief, awkward vignettes limn the pastimes of a 40-ish woman known only as ``Stout Mama.'' The eponymous protagonist is an unmarried, earth-motherly sort whose sensual love of food threatens to add flesh to her still-thin form. Her behavior--she drives a VW Beetle, fantasizes about Mick Jagger and listens to National Public Radio--is intended to reflect her liberal nature, but such details make her seem less like a freewheeling spirit than like a cliched relic of the 1960s who wears her outsider status like a badge. James's ( In China with Harpo and Karl ) neo-bohemian, super-spare sentences exaggerate this impression: ``Stout Mama has never owned a television.'' ``Stout Mama has decided to give up cigarettes.'' ``Stout Mama gets drunk only after sunset.'' This drifting, overextended character sketch could be a draft for something more substantial, but as it stands, it only offers hackneyed, quasi-feminist views of dieting, men, country and western music and traveling solo. (July)