Before Our Eyes

A family story charged with so many tragedies could easily lapse into melodrama, except for Alden's ability to give meaning and poignancy to the minutiae of family life. Protagonist Bern Rundle and her father achieve reconciliation, over her mother's wedding dress, in a trunk room packed with boxes filled with the past. Central to the story is brother Jeff's boat accident as a 13-year-old that has left him in a vegetative state. At 27, he lies motionless and fed by tubes in the family dining room, while his room upstairs is preserved the way it was on the day of the accident. Eventually, Bern carries him there to complete his destiny amid his baseball cards, dice and chewing gum. Alden's crisp style and eye for detail enable her to move back and forth in time as Bern deals with her brother's accident, her father's guilt and escape into alcoholism, her mother's budding middle-aged lesbianism and, finally, her own awakened lesbianism. As a photojournalist she documents all this and deliberates the ethics of doing so: ``there's a price to be paid for being open, even in a society that's supposed to be free.'' The only price the book pays is Alden's ( Letting in the Night ) tendency to overanalyze motives and feelings implicit in her narrative. (Oct.)