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92 Western American Literature market and sold the Open Road. He sent the money on to his sons and talked his way back into garbaging for a while.” Some readers will want to add: and so have we all. These two novels are not apprentice works, but assured products of wise and talented young writers who have found their own distinctive voices and have something to say about California — and more than California — which is fresh and important. CHARLES L. CROW Bowling Green State University Golden States. By Michael Cunningham. (New York: Crown Publishers, 1984. 241 pages, $12.95.) The family of twelve-year-old David Stark enjoys a precarious normalcy in Southern California. Mom is both widowed and divorced, but patiently soldiers on, coping with the bickering of David and young Lizzie, offering what help she can to Janet, who has fled home from a failing romance. Each of the characters has a problem or secret, and Mom’s is the darkest of all: though it is never stated, she is, or fears that she is, dying. David senses responsibility descending upon him, an unlikely prop. He is a slight, sensitive boy, unpopular for reasons he cannot understand, who is beaten up by the one classmate who seems to respond to his friendship. Yet we understand that David’s kindness and desire to protect are real, if confused with unfocussed sexuality. When Janet returns to San Francisco with her lover, David sets out with an unloaded pistol to rescue her. After many misadventures, David is restored to Mom and Lizzie, with nothing exactly accomplished, but a transi­ tion marked toward adulthood. This first novel is a honorable accomplishment, and especially successful in its scenes of smoldering sibling warfare. Nonetheless, the well-riveted struc­ ture seems to contain very little imaginative pressure. Cunningham restrains himself too much in his desire not to sensationalize. He will preach us no easy Jeremiads about the decadence of Southern California, which seems like suburbia anywhere, and he deliberately underplays the homoerotic awaken­ ing which is the key to David’s character and, I suppose, David’s future. Coyotes yap at the beginning and end of the book, but the Didion-like symbols do not evoke the fear of collapse and chaos, the inner demon which this novel needs. CHARLES L. CROW Bowling Green State University ...

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