THE SECRET OF HURRICANES

It's a pity that Oprah has shuttered her book club, since this first novel about a woman overcoming a fractured past might have found a home with her. From the works of Flannery O'Connor to Denis Johnson, Southern literature has made a special place for eccentrics, and this solid debut—slow moving but undeniably lyrical—bears out that connection. Pearl Starling is a 45-year-old hermit whose mysterious pregnancy is the talk of Waterville, N.C. She deals with her fellow townspeople—including the Pentecostal missionaries who show up at her door each day—with sardonic humor, but her brave front obscures a childhood poisoned by abuse, murder and a stay in Hollingsworth, a reform school that left her "a little crazy." Even as she jealously guards the identity of her child's father, Pearl shares with the reader her dour recollections of her own alcoholic father, the troubled teenagers who became her companions and the events that landed her in Hollingsworth. Much of this involves the Hunnycutts, Waterville's most prominent family, whose material success is undercut by Floyd Hunnycutt's sinister relationship with his daughters. Though the subject of incest may have lost its ability to shock or even surprise, Williams lends it the necessary gravity. Her main stylistic flaw is an overreliance on fragments for dramatic effect: "And I know she's part of my own wet heart. That she'll always be. That I'll always dream about her." Still, this is a promising first effort from an author with a distinctive voice. (Sept. 16)