NON FICTION

ONE OF THE FAMILY by Wendy Fairey (W. W. Norton & Co . : $22.95; 320 pp.). Fairey’s mother, Hollywood columnist Sheila Graham, had invented herself along the way, changing her name, omitting the detail of her Russian Jewish ancestry, discarding lovers until she found the one--F. Scott Fitzgerald--to whom she was prepared to devote herself, had his early death not cheated her of the opportunity. What Fairey did not fully comprehend, until her mother’s death in 1988, was that Graham had perpetuated certain fictions until people came to accept them as fact, particularly the identity of Fairey’s father. She had grown up as Wendy Westbrook, one of two children of Graham’s rebound marriage to Trevor Westbrook, hardly the most interesting of Graham’s male companions and friends. She was a middle-aged mother of two teen-agers before she learned that her father, in fact, was philosopher A. J. Ayer, a friend of her mother’s who just happened to be dining with Graham when she went into labor, and just happened to escort her to the hospital. Fairey’s attempt to set the past straight is a painful one, made more difficult by reticent personalities, veiled clues and confessions delivered in a repressed verbal code. And there is something peculiarly vulnerable about a grown woman who, thanks to a frank and accessible manner, can communicate longings that adults usually ignore, or try to deny. Fairey makes apologies for all involved, and seems to have come to terms with what happened, but for all the civility she brings to the story, she cannot quite camouflage the emotional wound she has suffered.