CRYSTALS

When life hands you a lemon, just add eye of newt. At least that's what Fiona Kendrick and her best friend Gia Fields decide when they're overwhelmed by mundane but pressing problems. Fiona, battling the IRS over whether she should be allowed the tax status of a professional artist, has a daughter with a brain tumor and a loving husband with a mysterious past. Gia, a romance author whose husband dumps her for a screechy, bleachy blond, is ready to try anything to turn her life around. So Gia joins forces and fluids with a local coven, and Fiona, who as a child saw auras around her teachers, puts her mind to a little telekinetic murder. Not to worry about the consequences: As Gia tells a Bible-thumping friend, ``This is witchcraft, not devil worship.'' Everything goes fine—professional success, death of enemies, etc.—and then it doesn't: An impromptu meeting of the coven at Fiona's blows up in her face; her daughter takes a turn for the worse; the two friends quarrel and gradually realize that this witchcraft thing isn't as simple as it looks—there are awesomely powerful forces arrayed against them, as any theologian or six-year-old could have predicted. Zavala (San Francisco Gold, 1995) whips up a lumpy soufflÇ of domestic heartache plus witchplay, with intermittent naughty bits and a fine flurry of special effects at the climax.