GLOWING GODWIN

SPOTLIGHT

Gail Godwin, who nested on the best-seller list in 1982 with A Mother and Two Daughters, may be returning to the nest with The Finishing School (Viking), a recollective, sun-lulled novel about a girl emotionally gaga over an older woman. Though the book is a study in enthrallment, it isn't overtly lesbian in its captive longings. The sexual attraction here is a light, nostalgic breeze, a tingling of golden hairs along the forearms. For all its sighs and might-have-beens, it's surprisingly comic. Its young heroine, Justin, is cooped up in a bedroom painted a hideous uggy lavender, her Aunt Mona is one of life's great complainers ("I sure as heck wish I was from one of those creepy old families dating back to God"), and even the most considerate grown-ups seem to be putting on an act (M 'What is your favorite color?' Ursula asked me, leaning forward in her chair and clasping her hands as people sometimes do when they are 'encouraging' a young person to talk"). Parting the curtains of a teenager's world, Godwin dramatizes the hurts and infatuations that pinken the features of her dollhouse creations; she turns adolescence into a theater of gawky emotions.

James Wolcott