Moyer (Tumbling
) offers an eloquent, stylish novel-in-stories, 16 tales narrated by Chester Patterson, an “Army brat,” who highlights his life from his sixth-grade crush in 1954 through the mid-1960s, when he’s “officially an adult,” and, finally, his father’s interment at Arlington National Cemetery. The lively Pattersons are a military family rounded out by Chester’s kid sister, Janet, a popular, pretty teenager, and his Rita Hayworth look-alike mom, Betty, who’s both a bombshell and borderline alcoholic. They move every few years, to places as varied as Okinawa and Georgia. Sex-obsessed young Chester (“there are whole days when I seem to walk around in a smoky haze of lust”) gets it on with his older, worldlier cousin Frenchie when he’s not reading Hemingway, Mailer, and Kerouac or bungling the beer runs made with his teenage pals. Later, on academic scholarship, Chester attends college in Chicago where he falls in love with arts major and violinist Callie Sinclair, in the most poignant of the short stories in this evocative coming-of-age cycle that, at their best, bring to mind the stories of Lorrie Moore. (Feb.)
