TO ORDER All titles may not be immediately available. . . . . . . . . . . . . RECENT REVIEWS: 9/16/97: Francis Bacon: Anatomy of an Enigma Michael Peppiat Nonfiction 9/15/97: The Witch of Exmoor Margaret Drabble Fiction 9/12/97: Boyhood: Scenes From a Provincial Life J.M. Coetzee Nonfiction 9/11/97: The Zig Zag Kid David Grossman Fiction 9/10/97: Even the Stars Look Lonesome Maya Angelou Nonfiction . . . . . . . . . . . . SEARCH BOOK ARCHIVES BY: title of book author publisher reviewer . . . . . . . . . . . . ALSO IN SALON: The Salon Classics Book Group Fiction Victim Erica Jong's tribute to Flaubert's "Madame Bovary." . . . . . . . . . . . . RECENT BOOK FEATURES

news of the spirit BY LEE SMITH PUTNAM FICTION 267 PAGES BY KATHARINE WHITTEMORE at her best, she sounds like Scout (from "To Kill a Mockingbird") grown up, at her worst a more-cute-than-usual Fannie Flagg. Lee Smith is Virginia-born. She was raised in the mountains where the words "story" and "lie" are interchangeable; her first yarn, at age 8, chronicled the romance between Adlai Stevenson and Jane Russell. Smith also has a fine ear for things Southern. In "News of the Spirit," one of the six longish stories in this collection, a fussy aunt threatens her niece by "putting the quietus" on her. Afternoons are hotter "than the hinges of hell." Girls wear bracelets made of frat pins, are elected Miss Bright Leaf Tobacco and exclaim "Pearl Harbor!" when they're cornered. Mamas discuss whether Dinah Shore really has "negro blood." The best story is "Live Bottomless," in which a humid adolescent named Jenny watches in horror and sympathy as her parents' marriage swirls apart. Eventually the three travel to Key West for "a geographical cure." But first, Jenny is hustled off to the quietus-putting aunt's house, a place awash in piqué jackets for the Mixmaster and crocheted skirts around the Jergens lotion bottle. It's a Very Christian household: "[Jesus] apparently prized neatness, cleanliness and order above all things; I imagined that the plastic runners on the living room carpet and the cellophane covers on all the lampshades were His idea." Less successful is "The Bubba Stories," in which a coed makes up a fictional brother to render her life more colorful. Smith is trying for picaresque, but the proceedings seem too cloying by half. The title story is another brother tale (he's real this time, and has been in and out of mental institutions). But unlike "Bubba," "News of the Spirit" has a sense of insight, a welcome spareness. Think Raymond Carver if he liked adjectives. No lie. Sept. 17, 1997 Katharine Whittemore is the editor of American Movie Classics magazine. BOOKMARK: http://www.salonmagazine.com/sneaks/sneak.html