In the Slammer with Carol Smith

Veteran short-story writer and novelist Calisher continues to surprise with the breadth of her knowledge of how we live now and with her supple, ever-fresh writing. Carol Smith, her enormously bright and winning protagonist, is a woman of color whose life was irrevocably changed when she fell in with some rich white revolutionaries in the inflammatory early 1970s. In the process of building a bomb to blow up they knew not what, they sent her out for sandwiches. When she returned, the house was in ruins and the bombers had escaped, and so the police seized Carol as the only available accomplice. Now out of jail, she has fallen into the patterns of a street person, dealing with a series of SWs (social workers) and feckless companions in squats in ruined corners of New York. Then she meets Martyn, an exiled South African in a mime troupe, and the two loners establish a wary relationship as Carol gradually mends. Calisher's darting impressionism offers a kaleidoscope of shifting moods, bits of street wisdom, often comic perceptions of life on the outside--all anchored by the thrilling creation of a growing sense of self. This is a small, subtle and intensely appealing book by a writer who has been steadily productive for most of our lives. (May)