Object Lessons

New York: Ballantine Books, 1997. Trade PB. Near Fine. Readers of her "Life in the 30s" column in the New York Times (collected in Living Out Loud ) know Quindlen as an astute observer of family relationsh ips. Her first novel is solid proof that she is equally discerning and skil lful as a writer of fiction. To sensitive Maggie Scanlan, the summer when s he turns 13 is "the time when her whole life changed." Aware that her fathe r, Tommy, had outraged the wealthy Scanlan clan by marrying the daughter of an Italian cemetery caretaker, Maggie is a bridge between her "outcast" mo ther and her grandfather, whose favorite she is. Domineering, irascible, in tolerant John Scanlan looks down on both Pope John XXII and President Kenne dy for deviating from traditional Catholic doctrine. His iron hand crushes his wife and grown children, and when he decides that Maggie's parents and their soon-to-be-five offspring should move from their slightly shabby Iris h Catholic Bronx suburb to a large house in Westchester which he has purcha sed for them, tension between her parents escalates and Maggie's loyalties are tested. But other unexpected events--her grandfather's stroke, her moth er's attraction to a man of her own background, her best friend's defection , her first boyfriend--serve both to unsettle Maggie and to propel her acro ss the threshold to adulthood. Quindlen's social antennae are acute: she co nveys the fierce ethnic pride that distinguishes Irish and Italian communit ies, their rivalry and mutual disdain. Her character portrayal is empatheti c and beautifully dimensional, not only of Maggie but of her mother, who ex periences her own wrenching rite of passage. This absorbing coming-of-age n.