SOME DO

DeLynn's hamfisted first novel of sisterhood in Berkeley, Sixties-style, goes Davidson's Loose Change one better--it's an even worse book. There's Kirsh, beautiful, asexual; Holly, rich and hemophiliac; Jed, Holly's husband, movement-macho and riding for a fall; Bettina, a runaway wife from Columbus, Ohio, turned lesbian; assorted members of the consciousness-raising sodality, etc. These unattractive folks talk, make love, open a vegetarian restaurant, revenge Holly's murder (she's been raped and dies of internal bleeding), go on anal-rape sprees of well-known area male chauvinist pigs--your everyday activity, right? This is the kind of book where if a character is hemophiliac, all the author's research is spewed out in a clot; Sixties history, likewise, is presented with all the Élan and flair of a microfilm machine. DeLynn's aim for seriousness is also badly deflected by her prose: ""He put his hand to the back of his neck and held the sweat in front of his nose."" What ever happened to all those young people in the Sixties who didn't live ""representative"" lives? Dreadful, vulgar, and swooningly trivial.