WALKING INTO THE RIVER

A first novel by Ernest Hemingway's granddaughter, with the requisite dim biographical echoes and a touch of Hemingway-iana, like sport-fishing and the African big-game hunting scene. But that's where the similarities to Papa stop: This is really a story about a woman's battle with mental illness and a few associated problems to boot—alcohol abuse, sex dependency, a penchant toward violence, etc. Little Eva Elliott of Yazoo City, Mississippi, inherits troubled genes (mother Rita is a drunk; father likes to kill things and dress in women's lingerie). Add to this a family setting that's about as cozy as a snake pit—thanks to the fact that her stepfather beats his wife—and you can understand why Eva grows up with a death wish rather than a collection of Barbie doll clothes. The only source of normalcy in her life is Aunt Freda, whom she often visits in Arkansas—though Freda isn't exactly June Cleaver since she urges an early sexual initiation on Eva and once almost killed Eva's awful stepdad. It's as a teenager that Eva begins to behave oddly herself, a victim of violent rages. One such episode lands her in a hospital for the insane, and from there it's all downhill—shock treatments, a rape attempt, and, later, the terrible realization that she's become a clone of her alcohol- pickled mother. Rigorous, at turns effectively dramatic, full of imagery from the bottom of a dirty terrarium and yearning after the literary South. Hemingway has promise—perhaps especially now that she's got this bitter pill out of her system.