Semaphore

Hawkes evokes the fragile nature of family ties, future plans and language in this stylistically ambitious suburban tale that merges coming-of-age rituals and marital misunderstandings with hints of the supernatural. Hawkes (author of the short-story collections Spies in the Blue Smoke and Playing Out of the Deep Woods) first introduces Joseph Carl Taft, his mute yet emotive protagonist, as a 10-year-old boy whose physiological voicelessness seems linked to premonitions of his family's future, which he receives in brief, terrifying flashes. Hovering in a hallucinatory state between dream and reality, Joseph is more cursed than blessed by his time-travel visions and must play a morbid game of wait-and-see when he glimpses the future drowning of his beloved younger sister. Realizing both that ""God speaks in events"" and that ""there's never a benefit in knowing what's to come,"" laconic Joe grows up cautiously, keeping one eye on the future and the other on Luce Sears, his lovely, understanding sweetheart (then wife) who learns to communicate with him through a singular semaphore of gestures and intuitions. Following a rocky start in which Hawkes establishes the slippery internal logic of Joe's ""Cassandra Syndrome,"" he draws us in to his risky novel's Carolina setting and sympathetic cast of characters. His passages of supernatural foreshadowing enliven this otherwise standard domestic drama, and only when Joe witnesses impending apocalyptic scenarios does the gimmick wear thin. At its best, Hawkes's metaphorically loaded novel suggests the complex manner in which identity is shaped by communication and threatened by solitude. (Aug.) FYI: Semaphore is being released simultaneously with Hawkes's Surveyor (Forecasts, May 4) as part of a two-novel debut.