Survivors

A working-class version of Ordinary People, this story promises a gritty, powerful family drama as Nieman deftly establishes the bleak atmosphere of rage and grief surrounding the MacLean family in 1972, as they struggle to cope with the death of a favorite child in a West Virginia mining accident. Life for the MacLeans was difficult enough before 18-year-old middle son Cory died. Parents Bud and Lola were both laid off when the bottling plant closed, and oldest son Mike had begun a violent descent into bar-brawling alcoholism. Now that Cory, the charming, handsome, college-bound athlete, is gone, the family places all hope for the future squarely on 16-year-old Stephan, the youngest MacLean. Stephan, who worshiped Cory while he was alive, is obsessed with him in death, and while the rest of the MacLeans try to get over their grief, Stephan is awash in an alienating sadness. Nieman shifts the narrative between Bud's voice and Stephan's, and while she succeeds in making the down-and-out, angry Bud both sympathetic and compelling, Stephen is a much more problematic character. Stephan's process of becoming untethered, described in free-flowing prose meant to jar and engulf the reader, only serves to drown the story in a confusing, incoherent despair. By the time the climactic secret about the sainted Cory's character is revealed, Nieman has abandoned the possibility of salvation for her characters, and the novel sinks under the weight of their unrelenting hopelessness. (Feb.)