THIS QUIET PLACE: A Cape Cod Chronicle

Mr. Allen's enjoyable journal of a two-week vacation on his hometown Cape casts into shadow all those others which are so nerve-tight intent upon immortalizing each unsullied treetop and tarn. He talks mainly about people and in a style reflecting a precise responsibility toward peak affective moments. Remembering a penultimate boyhood ride on a steam shovel -- ""I looked through the dirty forward window and watched the shovel gulping ahead of us. . . ""; or post-graduation, summer night sounds -- ""A clarinet that only moments before had uttered 'Pomp and Circumstance' squeaked once, as if it too were free for the whole summer. . . ."" There are memories of past excursions and newer visits and dilemmas: how to remove a fierce slumbering tomcat from a nearly finished jigsaw puzzle, the work of weeks; solemn kite-flying; a gentle reunion at the family cemetery. Mr. Allen abhors a plastic uncaring culture as manifest in packaged foods, frenzied tourists and a car which can kill two squirrels at one blow, and he detours the Enemy into inconsequence. Somewhat in the manner of Jean Shepherd's radio and TV testaments, a genial, full-bodied tribute to good people and good times, endemically small town New England.