Red Wine

With his first novel, Mayland tells an earnest but plodding story about two young people looking for love and certitude. Two Maine college students, narrator Bob Cranston, who drinks too much, and Linda are thrown together by chance one summer in Europe where they're working as gofers for a series of overseas tennis tournaments. Bob, a 19-year-old emotional wreck from Nebraska whose parents recently have separated, and Linda, an attractive, confident 18-year-old from the East Coast, seem an odd pairing. In fact, as Bob's lack of self-confidence and obsession with death grow wearying, it's less and less possible to understand what Linda sees in him as they work and travel in Rome, Athens and the islands of the Aegean Sea. While Bob's observations of his environment sometimes capture the way a young mind gorges on impressions, his lingering attention to detail, including the way Linda eats fried liver, is often merely ridiculous. Mayland accurately portrays the awkwardness of love at a young age, the insecurity and emotional seasickness that comes with the whipsawing of passion. But he does it with little irony, and the novel's bland conversational tone keeps Bob's angst from affecting the reader. (Aug.)