THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 9, 1995 TAG: 9508090039
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY PEGGY DEANS EARLE
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
FIRST CAME the letters.
They seemed innocent enough, written by Frankie, the little girl whom the Caldwells had been sponsoring in Appalachia since she was 2. True, they often contained thinly veiled requests for money and gifts, which the Caldwells usually fell for.
But when Frankie Crane actually showed up at the family's Iowa home that rainy spring evening, only Cal Caldwell suspected something wasn't right. His wife welcomed Frankie with open arms. But their 16-year-old daughter, May, saw the uninvited guest as nothing less than a savior. And so, Frankie stayed the night. . . and stayed. And stayed.
``Smithereens'' (Doubleday, 312 pp., $21.95), Susan Taylor Chehak's fourth novel, is a dark, forbidding tale of the influence that one powerful personality has on a girl and her family. This unique coming-of-age story revolves around narrator May Caldwell, who doesn't think she's much to look at. In fact, she mostly feels downright invisible. Her teenage despair and alienation inspire fantasies of suicide. Death appears as a handsome, dapper fellow who beckons, offering dramatic alternatives to yet another boring day in her little Iowa town. Until Frankie.
For May, who ``wasn't ugly enough to be made fun of and not pretty enough to draw a second look,'' the older, very pretty girl is a wild, exotic puzzle whose friendship and very presence in the house make May's existence suddenly interesting. ``For once in my life I wasn't longing to turn out the lights and close the door and crawl under the covers and go to sleep. For once in my life I didn't really believe anymore that what I wanted was to die.''
Frankie's influence on May is soon apparent. For the first time, May is reckless, accepting a ride home from school from a stranger, allowing him to kiss and grope her in his truck. She steals a pair of shoes from a department store. When Frankie becomes an instant accomplice to the theft, her act binds the two girls together as ``sisters.'' They become partners in petty crime, mischief and sexual adventure.
But lurking beneath these seemingly mild infractions are shocking, terrible secrets, deceptions and revelations in the lives of both girls.
The almost gothic mood of ``Smithereens'' is relieved by several sensitive, beautifully crafted vignettes. In one, Frankie and May entertain Meems, May's stricken grandmother. May fishes in Meem's huge matchbook collection and picks one out; Frankie reads its inscription and shows it to the mute, wheelchair-bound woman. ``Her tongue would start to move in her mouth; she'd lick her lips, as if she were going to say something, but nothing ever came. Or maybe it was that the place the matchbook came from was conjured up for her like a flower, a bloom of memory that brought back to her a sense of who she'd been, once, and of where she'd traveled to in her lifetime, with Grand.''
In another, May discovers that her grandfather destroyed a clay sculpture that he'd begun of his wife, and May imagines she still sees traces of it in the clay barrel. This mirrors the way May foresees Frankie's everlasting imprint on her own life.
But as Frankie's stay with the Caldwells continues, May, though she denies its import, begins to perceive the intruder for what she is. ``She was like a knife . . . mishandled, her blade could draw your blood. She was like sharp glass. And even if she would have been the first one to admit it that she maybe did have some jagged edges on her, she never did believe that it was up to her to try and smooth them down.''
Despite the melodrama, Chehak's characters resonate with authenticity. May will seem uncomfortably familiar to anyone who has suffered from an adolescent identity crisis manifested by hero-worship. Sometimes, as with Frankie, the object of adoration can become an agent of destruction. MEMO: Peggy Deans Earle is a staff librarian. by CNB