Wild Bananas

Sally says: ""My marriage to Barry will be a triumph of ideals and honesty.'' Barry says: ``You're my family, Baby.'' Five months later they are divorcedtheir ``wild banana'' dreams soured by a bunch of false assumptions. Though he really would have liked to be a jazz pianist, Barry has become a law student to satisfy his parents. They're not pleased with Sally Jane Adams, nor do her parents cotton to the thought of Barry giving them Jewish grandchildren. Since neither set of parents are exemplars of wedded bliss, Sally consults Mademoiselle magazine for advice on matrimony. ``Be honest,'' it suggests, but neither Sally nor Barry know how to be honest with themselves or each other. When Sally at last breaks free, she is steadied by a new sense of self which presumably will lift her to a more mature level of awareness. Though Thomson's depiction of marriage as another rite-of-passage is interesting, Sally and Barry's union is so unrelievedly dreary that it's hard to care whether they stay together or not. The pithy humor in this first novel by the author of Closeups, winner of a Flannery O'Connor Award, leavens what might otherwise be a quite contrived exercise. January