FICTION

BRUISED FRUIT by Amy Ephron (Doubleday: $14.95; 158 pp.). Model/actress Kate Bailey is damaged goods, a sun-kissed piece of Los Angeles produce threatened by creeping psychological mold: Her lover was murdered a few years ago, some people think Kate might have done it, and the stress has lead to a little mental decay. She is a promisingly weird character surrounded by more familiar types--gruff Detective Murphy, who has an unerring instinct for bothering Kate just when things are otherwise looking up; Sam the paternalistic lawyer and Ruthie his maternalistic wife; and Holly, Kate’s sisterly, if scatterbrained, pal. Stephen is Kate’s new lover, equipped with “strong but chiseled features” and an air of mystery as thick as summertime smog.

It’s clear from the start that Kate is a victim, not a perpetrator. Ephron writes, “She thought about rouge and then decided that her paleness might be to her advantage. There would be men at Holly’s house. She would flirt with them and one of them would ask her out for dinner.” The real question is, will Kate Bailey ever find peace of mind--and, tangentially, will the reader care, when Kate does so little on her own behalf? Ephron’s style is alluring, but pale; she aspires to Joan Didion’s bleached terseness but can’t yet match that author’s strong rhythms. Two brief encounters--with an agent who spouts amputated compliments like, “Don’t you look!”, and an aged producer who only moves his head when he talks “as though he were a ventriloquist’s dummy all on his own”--show what Ephron can do when she lets herself go. She has a wicked eye. If only she’d show us more of what she sees.