FICTION

THE BLUE STREAK by Ellen Lesser (Grove Weidenfield: $18.95; 251 pp.) If Ellen Lesser were a man this would be a classic first novel, the semi-autobiographical story of a young man whose father’s death forces him to come to terms with the members of his family and his own past. But then, the whole story is a flip on the standard Jewish family coming-of-age story. The pushy, demanding parent in the Winger family not Mom but Dad, a man who was always correcting his son’s speaking habits, advising him on how best to do whatever he was trying to do, and writing Danny in and out of Dad’s will, depending on whether Danny had just committed a travesty. Danny has to struggle past Dad, from a somewhat stereotypically self-sacrificing mother, from a maddeningly know-it-all big sister and her condescending husband. It takes a certain amount of authorial nerve to write about this kind of family, when Philip Roth staked his claim to the turf decades ago. Lesser is a perceptive writer who can round off a nice anecdote, but the novel seems to skim the surface of her characters’ feelings. Much of what they have to say feels too familiar; the reader keeps wanting to go a little deeper.