MEMORY MAMBO.<i> By Achy Obejas</i> .<i> Cleis Press: 249 pp., $24.95</i>

This first novel is one of those interesting semi-failures that forces the reader to consider what exactly are the necessary components for good fiction. “Memory Mambo” is an intelligent, confidently written book, with keen observations about family, truth and identity, with lively dialogue and a uniquely good-humored, occasionally painful evocation of growing up Cuban and a lesbian. Yet there are also too many awkward truisms, too much forced imagery and artificial plotting for the book to hit the jackpot in the literature stakes. (These flaws also marred Obejas’ collection of zestfully written short stories.) You might say, stop right there, this author’s not worth reading. Not true. Obejas, a cultural writer for the Chicago Tribune, is an artist in the making. And she’s so accomplished that it’s possible to treat “Memory Mambo” like a buffet: Enjoy the good parts, shrug off the bad. Besides, the woman is a charmer. She writes as if she were your old pal--garrulous, ironic, a bit irritable perhaps--catching you up on all the family gossip. Like Dorothy Allison in “Bastard Out of Carolina,” Obejas seduces you into her story about the lives and loves of an extended Cuban family in Chicago with great good humor and anecdotal chat.