THE LOST LEGENDS OF NEW JERSEY

The gentle empathy for the intricate muddle of family and romantic relationships that distinguished Reiken’s accomplished debut, The Odd Sea (1998), is also a dominant feature of this considerably more ambitious successor.

The story, a plaintive demonstration of the truism “that we all lose things. That loving someone means having to bear the pain of separation,” is set in northern New Jersey (Livingston) and Florida in the late 1970s and afterward, and in the minds and memories of its several major characters. Foremost is Anthony Rubin, a high-school hockey star and a hopeful romantic who believes he’ll somehow liberate sexpot Juliette Dimiglio (daughter of a “minor gangster” besieged by loan sharks) from her oafish boyfriend, and reconcile his adulterous father Michael and unstable mother Jess (who abandons her family and moves to Florida). Reiken moves skillfully among these lives, and others (including those of Anthony’s unillusioned older sister Dani[elle]; his former best friend Jay, the son of Michael’s married mistress; and Michael’s widowed father Max, in love again in his late 80s), creating multiple centers of interest that we visit again and again, in present time (during Anthony’s visit to his mother, three years after her flight south) and in lengthy action-filled flashbacks. Outcroppings of both shockingly sudden violence (a suicide, two savage beatings) and slow inexorable decline (the anorexic resignation of a roommate with whom Anthony bonds when he’s hospitalized for knee surgery, the increasing distance Jess keeps from even those she loves most) are subtly juxtaposed with quietly wrenching, oddly offbeat lyrical moments (Michael’s hilarious invention of “the Yiddish constellations” for his stargazing family; Anthony and Dani impulsively bike-riding through Livingston’s deserted streets in the middle of the night). Such seductive mysteries cohere in Anthony’s mind as “legends” that will simultaneously enrich him and—as the bittersweet conclusion shows—quietly break his heart.

Young as he is, Reiken knows the territory of emotional commitment and confusion as well as anybody writing today. Beautiful stuff.