THE MAP ON THE CEILING

ine and Roses story in a Hot-Tin-Roof Tennessee town setting where the atives are restless and probably the edgiest is Angela Varner. She is married to the big man in town who is a September 58 to her May 29, and impotent in bed, and she spends most of her time sipping Scotch and swallowing tranquilizers. She tries to shake off the past-- a breakdown following her brother Courtney's voluntary Hero's death in Korea; their father had earlier committed suicide. She also tries shake off the hangdog attention of her overgrown, underdeveloped stepson. She drives around in her Cadillac and she eyes Frank Nugent, lean, withdrawn, fortyish. She finally goes to bed with him but he wants to shake her off until she is free. From then on, in a stupor of drugs and drinks, she is submerged in the lost, lost world of the little girl named Angela Varner who had a wonderful big brother Courtney who took care of her and loved her after their father had taught them to be self-sufficient. But not without each other... All of this is handled with contacts and free-floating associations which add a terrifying reality to a , sorry, sick story with that compulsion to read on, and a lingering after-aste of pity and waste.