TWO HALVES OF NEW HAVEN

A vivid, wildly wide-ranging debut from science-writer Schecter, who chronicles the rocky road chosen by a young medical student as he comes to grips with his career aims and his sexuality in one fell swoop. Paul Levinson has come to Yale Medical School largely at the urging of his father, who's footing the bill, but he quickly realizes that his passions lead in other directions altogether. Fascinated by photography, Paul spends as much time with a camera as he does studying and dissecting, even approaching a celebrity physician who stars on a PBS show with the idea that he too might combine medicine and show business. Pressures continue to mount during his first year because of his overwhelming creative and sexual urges, until Paul finally decides to drop out of med school and go his own way. The ``other half'' of New Haven is revealed when he begins to tend bar in a trendy Italian restaurant, meeting a new set of friends who allow him to declare his homosexuality and to take the first giddy steps toward romance and infatuation. He still has a foot in his former world, however, which enables him to act on his creative impulses and ambition by applying to film school; in the end, he even regains his father's respect by having the courage to go his own way. Saucy and superbly detailed, but still troubled by an effervescence that tends toward superficiality, and by energy surges that cause it to spin occasionally out of control. Promising, then, but uneven.