Tales Out of School

Elegant, lyrical and elegiac, this powerful first novel affectingly introduces members of a genteel, wealthy German-Jewish family living in early 20th-century Galveston, Tex. Felix Mehmel, scholarly and loyal, works his way through the Aeneid and through adolescent stirrings of desire, which he acts upon with Wick Frawley, once a bully and now a friend. Felix's mother, estranged from her New Orleans Christian community for marrying a Jew, finds herself vulnerable once more after her husband dies during the 1900 hurricane. Her brother-in-law Leo becomes the enthusiastic sponsor of Roache and Munger, amateur ``aeronauts'' who model themselves after the Wright brothers. The mysterious and benign interventions of Yankel Schmulowicz, a mute immigrant from Russia, who stages puppet shows so realistic that the audience is spellbound, indelibly alter the lives of these people and others in their orbit. Taylor's spare, supple prose easily accommodates effective forays into magic realism as well as nuanced evocations of the desire, religious doubt and affection that animate his memorable characters. Because he handles so many different characters in a short narrative span, some of them inevitably are less than full-bodied actors in his human comedy. It is a measure of his skill that even those met briefly in this bewitching novel continue to resonate in the reader's imagination. Author tour. (Oct.)