THE WISHING BOX

A touching yet not-too-earnest first novel about a single mother, her sister, and the father who loved but left them. Julia is a 30-ish, Oakland, California, single mom who works more or less miserably for an “enlightenment” publisher, peddling the kind of psychobabble that only wishes it could make its way to Oprah. Her sister, Lisa, though a few years younger, often has to play the big sister to Julia, who’s forgetful, impetuous, and highly emotional. Together'maybe because their aunt Simone is a clairvoyant who views the present in a glass of water'the sisters cook up a magic trick with major consequences: They create a wishing box and ask for the return of the father who abandoned them when they were small. In a classic example, however, of “Be careful what you wish for,” Dad does reappear'and Julia runs away from her home and child, and into the arms of a man she meets in a cafÇ. Obviously, the two women have some father “issues,” and the ensuing complications for the sisters, for Julia’s seven-year-old son, and for their divorced mother create a novel that is both satirical and hopeful. Relying on “magical” mechanisms last seen in the early fiction of Alice Hoffman, Slater, a reporter for San Francisco’s East Bay Express, uses several characters to tell her story'all of them unevenly developed and unequally appealing. Lisa is far less likable than Julia, and some readers might have preferred to hear their mother Carolina’s story from Carolina herself, rather than from crazy Simone. Still, Slater’s men'Bill, the dad, and Gabriel, Julia’s lover'are generously drawn, indicating that for all the troubles of their past, the sisters remain optimistic about the future. A debut that can’t quite decide whether it’s serious or whimsical. Still, it succeeds, intermittently, at being both.