FICTION

EDISTO REVISITED by Padgett Powell. (Henry Holt: $20; 145 pp.) Edisto is a town on the coast of South Carolina, the title of Padgett Powell’s first novel, written in 1984 and the summer home of his narrator, Simons Manigault. Simons, need I say it, is a rich kid, swaying temporarily in the crack between college and career, out to avoid commitment and none too desperate for that first paycheck. He’s sorting things out before jumping in (using, of course, various connections) to a life in architecture in which he fears he may have to do derivative things like design malls, instead of becoming Frank Lloyd Wright immediately. His ever-helpful mother, a hard drinking gravelly voiced (I imagine) socialite whom the narrator claims reads a lot, brings Simons’ lovely, thoroughbred cousin down to the summer house for the summer and leaves her there, in Simons’ lap. (Mothers delivering prey to their male offspring, how sweet.) Simons balks but eventually comes around. It’s fine writing, but events in the plot have more portent for Simons than they do for the reader, and that is a near-fatal flaw.