FICTION

ROSE by Rose Boyt (Random House: $19; 201 pp.). As the Grateful Dead would say: What a long, strange trip it’s been. The Rose of this novel, who seems the approximate age of the author whose name she bears, has been haunted, often hunted, by Klaus, the sea captain with whom her mother began an affair when the girl was only 7. Her private imaginings are unexpected and often painfully blunt, the reflections of a child who has seen too much for her own good. Her public plight is to be misunderstood, particularly by her mother, who transforms her own inability to hold Klaus’ attentions into a lingering suspicion that her daughter is trying to lure him away. The truth, of course, is much more complicated than that. Little Rose does seem remarkably precocious; when she buttons up a jacket Klaus has brought her as a gift, and its cinched waistline transforms her pudgy, girl figure into a provocative junior hourglass shape, she is proud, delighted and embarrassed, all at once. She yearns, throughout the story, for an unfettered relationship, but by the end of this difficult, confrontational novel, she has achieved only the clear hope that it might someday happen. A provocative work by--perfectly enough--the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud.