Pack up, kids

A sequel is a tricky thing. You want to reward the reader who followed you from the previous book by assuming a shared history. Yet you risk alienating the newcomer if you don’t repeat at least part of a story that’s already been told. Galaxy Craze -- yes, that’s the author’s real name -- solves the problem in “Tiger, Tiger” by fast-forwarding her characters a few years. It’s a brand-new phase of their lives, a landscape that will, presumably, feel fresh to everyone.

Lucy’s a restless soul who has left her husband, Simon, and uprooted her kids once before, as readers of “By the Shore,” Craze’s well-received debut novel, already know. Lucy’s at it again in “Tiger, Tiger,” the well-meaning but somewhat jumbled follow-up.

This time around, Lucy thinks big and takes her daughter, May, now a teen, and her son, Eden, from their home in London to live in a California ashram run by the mysterious guru Parvati. Craze knows a bit about this kind of dislocation -- her own mother moved a young Galaxy from England to the U.S.

For May and Eden, it’s a scary time. May falls under the spell of a sexy and sometimes devious girl at the ashram, while Eden flounders under the burden of this enormous change in his young life. Both kids miss their family in England.

Here’s May, settling into her first night at the ashram: “The flame flickered as we lay down to sleep, and our mother kissed us good night and blew out the candle. I kept my eyes open. The night outside the window was lighter than the room, and the shape of the trees appeared through the shawl. The shadows of the branches looked like hands against the wall. They made me think of blood in the water.”

Craze is skilled at showing the allure of the California ashram’s communal life, but it’s not all that big a surprise when she reveals its rotten core. The truly interesting stuff, like why Lucy’s there in the first place or why her husband hasn’t come looking for her, gets short shrift. So does the outcome of an upsetting subplot about a woman giving away her baby. The high drama that puts May in peril in the closing pages of “Tiger, Tiger” nearly swamps this slender tale, and Lucy’s foolishness leaves us wondering whether she’ll be any different if we meet again. *