FICTION

THE ESTUARY by Georgia Savage (Graywolf Press: $20; 216 pp.) This Australian novel starts awkwardly, with a funeral scene marred by forced humor and clunky dialogue; it ends unconvincingly, with a sudden resolution of the problems that have dogged Georgia Savage’s narrator, Vinnie Beaumont, for years. In between, though, it’s a river well worth drifting down. On its way to the sea, it meanders through some choice comic territory, both sunny and shaded.

What happens is that after that first chapter we adjust. Savage’s style, which seemed careless, tightens and takes on glints of lyricism. We learn to expect new incidents and characters to pile on board at a reckless pace. We realize that large areas of Vinnie’s life are being withheld and will show up eventually, like backwaters entering the main channel.

Above all, we come to enjoy Vinnie, who is bright and warm-hearted and sexy, though unlucky in relationships. Her mother treats her dismissively; her husband dies young; other men come and go; her daughter runs off as a teen-ager and seems bent on repeating the family pattern.

Savage (“The House Tibet”) gives Vinnie a talisman, however: a sense of proportion. She can dance with a soldier on a train, knowing she will never see him again. She can enjoy working at a sleazy hotel called The Bananas among a whole crew of raffish characters, knowing it won’t last forever. She can wait for the people who do matter--and, like the reader, feel that the waiting isn’t time out of life, but some of the best time there is.