Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, March 4, 1990                   TAG: 9003042260
SECTION: HORIZON                    PAGE: F-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Reviewed by MARY ANN JOHNSON
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BEATTIE'S `PICTURING WILL' UNSETTLING, UNSTAISFYING PICTURING

"Picturing Will" is an unusual choice for a Book-of-the-Month Main Selection.

It is low action, low glitz, and has appeal for a specialized audience. Its virtue lies in the fact that author Ann Beattie, of Charlottesville, has been lauded by those literati who favor modern writing that concentrates on the haphazardness and inexplicable meaning of our detached lives. Too often, as here, this comes at the expense of full character development and coherent storyline.

The novel concerns itself with the impact of a young child, Will, on the lives of those around him. To his mother, a wedding photographer with artistic aspirations, he rates second to her career. To her lover, Mel, Will is a treasure, and he solicitously assumes responsibility for the boy. Will's natural father, a ne'er-do-well roamer, lives in Florida with his third wife, and to him, Will is a nuisance. In fact, Will fits only tangentially into the section about his father, a part of the novel that strives to stand on its own, an unfinished story within the story.

Minor characters briefly relate to Will in varying ways, but only his relationship with a friend and with Mel and with Mel's boss have much dimension.

The joys and rewards of raising a child are submerged here under the burdens, the worries, the fears and frustrations to the point that one can picture the author, who has no children, as an aunt writing her way through the "terrible 2s" of a nephew left in her care. The disjointed pieces induce a sense of having been frequently interrupted by demands for more juice and crackers. The effect is unsettling and unsatisfying, which may well be Beattie's intent.

Ann Beattie is a good observer of behavior, both child and adult, and her grasp of detail is so fine that little things are more memorable than the whole. This reader was left with the desire to know either more about these characters and their lives, or less.