Red Whiskey Blues

Gess ( Good Deeds ) brings new insight to this engaging novel of failed connections. Recently widowed Emily Hansen wants her needy mother Francine, a recovering alcoholic, to comfort her grief. She wants the father who walked out 18 years ago, and the husband who died, to return. She wants to go to bed with playwright Gene Lisicky, her summer tenant who loves Emily and his estranged wife. Forced to accept the gap between these people and herself, and tempted to repeat, in her own terms, her mother's self-destruction, Emily is able to cherish her closeness to Lizzie, her six-year-old daughter, and to accept the possibility of friendship. Rooted in truth, though slightly facile, the conclusion of this intelligent, energetic novel, ``that sometimes relationships that didn't happen are better than those that did,'' saddens and also affirms. (Mar.)