City of Roses

This collection of autobiographical, fictional tales warmly portrays the author's youth in rainy Portland, Oreg., the ""City of Roses.'' From the perspective of middle age, Moffat (The Times of Our Lives reflects on a childhood in the late '30sincluding stumbling efforts to learn how to readthen playing Juliet in a regional Shakespeare festival after World War II, and later, marriage while a sophomore at Stanford. Especially poignant is Moffat's evocation of an exasperating yet funny manic-depressive father, who enters her stories ``completely uninvited.'' The final piece, ``Giving My Mother a Bath,'' is a tender glimpse of how roles reverse later in life, when a daughter finds herself acting as mother to her own aging, sick mother. (December)