VOICES OF A SUMMER DAY

Voices speak, faces appear, moments and images come and go,"" softly, for the most part, in this first person retrospective of Benjamin Federov's life as he watches his youngster during a ball game. The almost nine innings add up to some fifty years and they are gravid with a sense of mood and memory. Actually there's something of the sweet-sharp nostalgia of a much younger Shaw (i.e. Girls in Their Summer Dresses). There are lots of girls here too all through Federov's life-- in school; in college; at the start of the war when he met and quickly married Peggy; during it- ""a war is a long time""- when there was Leah; and after when he began to feel ""surrounded"" by Peggy. Then too there are childhood scenes in a Russian-Jewish first generation ""mespucheh""; others of the death of his father; a summer at camp; a wretched evening at a country club; etc., etc. Shaw's Voices all echo transient experience and while they don't say anything really important, they are seductively easy to listen to. April Literary Guild dual selection.