FICTION

RETURNING TO ‘A’ by Dorien Ross. (City Lights: $18.95; 180 pp.) A young girl named Loren, 16 and growing up in Berkeley, goes to Andalusia to learn to play guitar with the Gypsies. The basic element in these songs is called the falseta, “an original melodic phrase housed within the traditional unchanging rhythmic compas. “ There are many kinds of falsetas ; siguiriyas , or songs of weeping; soleares , or songs of loneliness; bulerias , or songs of flirtation. There are the duendes , the ghosts that come with the west wind and are brought into the Gypsies’ songs. “Duende could come in a small movement of the dancer’s hand. In the beginning ahi of the singer’s chant. In the dirt of the thumb as the guitarist’s hand closed in on a D-minor chord.” And while Loren lovingly draws the many teachers she becomes close to, she remains an outsider. “In short, I was not Gypsy. And la culpa therefore would always be mine. A form of original sin. To be born non-Gypsy with the love of flamenco running through my veins.” The book has another story within it, the story of Loren’s relationship with her brother, Aaron, who dies from an overdose of nitrous oxide, but this is just one drive among many in the girl, and is, frankly, overshadowed by the fascinating insights into Gypsy culture.