CELESTE ASCENDING

A transparently redemptive tale in which a troubled young woman, reared in the suburbs, is overwhelmed by a past filled

with the requisite tragedies. Jones (A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, 1990, etc.) is a skillful enough writer but, here, not a particularly imaginative one: both plot and characters seem lifted from a generic literary Chinese menu: tragedies from Column A, the protagonist's vocation from Column B, and the mix of characters from Column C. The story, alternating between the present and the past, concerns Celeste, the 29-year-old daughter of an American father and a French mother. She recalls how she grew up outside Manhattan, where her mother was unhappy, quarreled bitterly with Celeste's French grandmother, who owned a Bordeaux vineyard, and, when Celeste was ten, committed suicide. In high school she became close friends with a girl named Sally. When Sally also killed herself, Celeste, by then in college, began drinking heavily. A published writer who doesn't seem to spend time writing, she also recalls how she came to teach a creative-writing class in Harlem. Meanwhile, in the present, she meets tycoon Alex, and is soon making wedding plans. When Alex becomes abusive, Celeste, still a serious boozer, realizes she's an alcoholic and stops drinking. Now, able to see more clearly, will she shape up in time to avoid making a bad marriage?

An uncompelling riff on overcoming some hard knocks in time to find wisdom.