NORTHERN EXPOSURE

A unimpressive first novel about a woman who sets off to find her first husband--now married to her best friend. Dianna Jarrett is a San Francisco photographer married to an almost stereotypically rigid and anal lawyer named David. One day Dianna realizes that she is really still in love with Alan Forbes, her first husband, whom she hasn't seen in ten years. (Alan was the college art professor who divorced her after three months in order to marry her childhood friend and roommate, Emily). So: Dianna dumps David and heads for Boston to confront Alan with her love for him. Once there, she learns that Emily--suffering severe post-partum depression--has just left Alan and their month-old infant daughter. Dianna moves in with him (platonically) to take care of the baby. . .and discovers that she no longer loves him. By now, Emily has gone completely bonkers: on an evening visit she sees Dianna and Alan and the baby together and assumes that they are married (irony of ironies) and the baby belongs to them. She is institutionalized; Dianna, freed of her obsession with Alan, falls in love with an old poetry prof and makes plans to become a painter and discover her true self. McCormick's prose is gently soporific, her storyline propelled forward by a series of unlikely coincidences (and the addition of a cutesy young hitchhiker named Liz). Vaguely pleasant, then, but generally forgettable.