Excuse Me for Asking

In a small town, can you ever have the freedom to do as you please? Arnold (the praised Daughters of Memory) empathetically but rather languidly describes life in Cypress Springs, a small Texas town where children may leave but ultimately will return to settle near their parents. Flamboyant Julia seems an unlikely college freshman roommate for the studious Robin, raised by an aunt and on scholarship at Texas Tech, but against the odds, the two become friends. Though she's a rebel, at least where her mother is concerned, Julia marries her high-school boyfriend, who has stayed in Cypress Springs; meanwhile, Robin, who has never known her parents, becomes a schoolteacher in Houston and has a child out of wedlock before she, too, feels the pull of small-town life. Arnold knows the language of a community and speaks it with authority, using shifting viewpoints to advance the narrative and to show how her characters' perceptions are affected by the said and the unsaid. Minor figures are drawn with sure, minimal brush strokes, as with Susie, who becomes a Legal Aid lawyer in order to have something to do, or Evelyn, who lends Robin a piece of furniture to increase the chances of Robin marrying her son. Robin's voice isn't sufficiently differentiated from Julia's, and there's a poorly executed subplot about Robin's hunt for her parents. Still, Arnold makes clear with passion and humor the ways in which children grow up and establish the continuity of families and towns. (Oct.)