WOMAN MADE OF SAND

Eleven interlocking but self-sustaining stories (several previously published) shape an earnest debut from psychotherapist Kobin about a family of four that struggles with, and prevails against, adversities ranging from divorce and remarriage to career sea changes.

Harriet and Phillip are the parents of Matina and younger Eric. Phillip is a dutiful son living mostly in his father’s shadow on Long Island as an executive in the family wallpaper business, but his father’s death (“Rain”) exposes faultlines in his marriage that are quick to widen. As an earlier story (“What I Learned from Clara”) shows, Harriet loves to dance and isn’t one to avoid a flirtation, not even when it leads to an outright affair while Phillip is away on business, after he’s moved with wife and kids far from his parents and started fresh. Eventually, Phillip remarries, to the much younger Marianne, and accordingly suffers hostility from Matina (“His Mother, His Daughter”), but it’s the desperation in his new wife’s attitude after a time of unsuccessful attempts to have their own child that really wears him down (“Woman Made of Sand”). While Harriet has found a new career in waste management and begun a relationship with a music professor who likes to dance, brainy Matina has entered medical school and continued a part-time career as a model (“Madonna at Monterchi”). And Eric reaches the pinnacle of his own short-lived dancing career while performing in a Prokoviev ballet for his entire family—including Phillip, Marianne, and their new baby (“Discipline and Will”).

A quietly competent collection. The fragments do connect to form a larger whole, but one without great intensity or momentum.