Shelter

In a series of interlocking vignettes, first novelist Gibson traces the process of being a family's decline. We first meet the Demerests when they move into a new house in a nameless community. Joan copes with the four children, and Kyle, a vendor who services cigarette machines, wonders whether he is happy. The family goes through seemingly normal transformations over the next decade, with a few surrealistic touches. Rebellious Melissa discovers she's a lesbian; Daryl has a brief high school basketball career until his skin turns green; perfectionist Brenda becomes a miniature Nancy Reagan, scheming to be the consummate conservative political wife, and the baby, Kevin, experiences a spurt of artistic genius. As Kyle and Joan divorce, the breakdown of the Demerests decay of the family is reflected in the slow, mysterious sinking of their house, which eventually forces the family to enter through the second-floor windows. With bleak insight, Gibson effectively portrays the complexities of family ties and seems most conscious of the agony and deliberate cruelty that family members kin can visit on one another. The Demerests find little joy among themselves and little pleasure in life. The novel stays faithful to time's plodding nature, and Gibson's detached tone conveys a painful hopelessness, at times overwhelmingly. But the uneasy blend of realism and fantasy jars the reader and ultimately undermines his message. (Apr.)