DATE: Sunday, September 7, 1997             TAG: 9709040596

SECTION: COMMENTARY              PAGE: J2   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Book Review

SOURCE: BY DIANE SCHARPER 

                                            LENGTH:   80 lines

MOTHER'S AND DAUGHTER'S PARALLEL LIVES UNEVENLY TOLD

PLAIN SEEING

SANDRA SCOFIELD

HarperCollins. 301 pp. $24.

Plain Seeing by Sandra Scofield is set up like Kenneth Burns' Pulitzer Prize-winning book and television series on the Civil War, with photographs (in this case descriptions of photographs), letters and text blended together. But instead of covering a few years well, it covers about 55 years haphazardly.

The novel is made up of two stories that become one story. There are two protagonists, who have many things in common. Both are women; both have a creative streak; both have love affairs - even after they are married; both are close to their mothers; both have daughters whose paternity is uncertain; both have life-threatening illnesses; and both have a penchant for photographs and for photographers, whom they don't marry, but with whom they become involved.

The protagonists, in fact, could be dead ringers for one another and, in a sense, they are, because they are mother and daughter.

The plot - divided into two books - involves their relationship: In the first book, the mother, Emma Laura Clarehope, living in a Texas farming town, loses her father in a farming accident and is forced to move to New Mexico with her impoverished mother, sister and brother. At this time, Emma Laura has a brief fling with an amateur photographer, Wesley Perkins.

Emma Laura then moves to California, and lives with friend and screenwriter Hollis Berry, who may or may not be her lover. In a few weeks, Emma Laura learns she is pregnant; she chooses to bear the child and raise it. Emma Laura, who now goes by her middle name, Laura, returns to her own mother, Frieda Greta (who when her husband died, dropped her first name to go by Greta) and gives birth to the baby, Lucy, who grows up with a tendency to make glib statements, such as ``The only way to be free is to give up love.''

Soon, Laura marries Charlie and bears another child, Faith, who for unknown reasons, is never seen in this novel. Then Laura dies of Bright's disease (kidney failure) when Lucy is 15.

The second book concerns Lucy from age 22 to 46, a span in which she has several love affairs, marries Gordon, has several more love affairs, and bears a daughter, Laurie, who may or not be her husband's child, just as Lucy may or may not be Charlie's child, or Hollis' child, or Wesley's child.

Lucy also feels as though she doesn't know her mother - to say nothing of her father - and believes that her own life is thwarted because of this. When her rocky marriage ends, she researches her mother's life and tells the story of that life from age 13 to age 18. This story comprises book one of the novel.

Lucy - she is told this several times - is unable to get over the death of her mother. This circumstance, Lucy says, is the central truth of her life. Yet one is reminded of the queen's comment in ``Hamlet:'' ``the lady doth protest too much, methinks.'' Lucy tells of her preoccupation with her mother's life and death, yet her actions show little sign of that preoccupation.

Scofield is an award-winning author of six previous novels. Sections of Plain Seeing suggest those awards were deserved. ``Emma Laura's Book, 1938-1943,'' the tone of which is reminiscent of John Steinbeck's novel, Of Mice and Men, except that the action is seen through a woman's eyes, is absorbing. Why? Emma Laura is a multifaceted character; her book covers only five years, and Scofield has control and focus.

But ``Lucy's Book, 1965-1989'' is all over the place. Sometimes it's moving, as when Lucy finds the photographs of her mother taken by Wesley Perkins. But even when moving, the plot feels contrived. Scofield tries to cover too many years in too short a space. Doing that, she uses too many motifs and stories within too many connecting motifs and stories, making an overly complicated story even more so.

Lucy's aunt, commenting on Emma Laura's life and saying perhaps more than she means, gives a fitting commentary on this novel: ``Lord, Lucy, it's such a complicated story. To tell you the truth, it's hard to remember just what happened.'' MEMO: Diane Scharper teaches memoir writing at Towson University in

Towson, Md. ILLUSTRATION: Photo

Sandra Scofield

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