Serpent in the Garden of Dreams

The world of Tildy Glick, 43, falls apart when her boyfriend, Ray says simply, “I can’t do this,” and walks out. Over the course of this first novel from poet and short story writer Messing, Tildy muses obsessively on her life, desperate to discover what went wrong. From memories of her life with Ray (their second date, Fourth of July fireworks, etc.) to childhood recollections of her mother’s lover, Jim Price, her father’s depth-of-night departure and her own confusion at her mother’s mercurial moods, Tildy covers the waterfront. To regain her equilibrium, she tries everything—placing a personal ad, calling a radio talk show, going on a blind date—with predictable results. Tildy’s adult attempts to capture and hold her incandescent mother through memory make for the most vivid and immediate scenes in the book, but the switching among recent memories in the first person and other childhood memories in the third is jarring, and keeps the childhood events at a distance. There’s some beautiful writing, but the emotional terrain is familiar. (May)