The woman has a way with words and an attitude toward life that puts it all in proper, if delightfully skewed, perspective. This is a collection of syndicated newspaper columns originally titled ""Off the Wall."" With her significant other, dubbed ""Sweetie,"" as her foil, Wall (My Love is Free . . . But the Rest of Me Don't Come Cheap, not reviewed) delivers a pungent, acerbic commentary on love, mating, mothers, pets, Harleys, and such stuff as life is made of. One zinger follows another as Wall and her girlfriends--Maxine, Rosie, and Leila, among others--follow their bliss through younger lovers (""I have jeans older than this boy""), diets, divorce, buying a track, kids (""I say we leave them in day care until they're old enough to vote""), topless beaches, and home ownership (""I figure if God wanted a lawn, he'd mow it""), and even an evening in Paris. Born in Tennessee and raised in Alaska, Wall has the southemer's warm girl for metaphor and a northerner's cool aptitude for telling it like it is. On the other hand, there's a flair for the surreal that is uniquely her own. How many women have been sexually aroused by an overgrown goldfish? The cast of characters here includes Mom (""wearing two-inch spiked heals, pedal pushers, and a raffled top"") and an assortment of cousins and aunts, featuring Aunt May, whose life-size outdoor nativity scene is surpassed only by her fruitcake (""She doesn't slice it; she pours it by the shot""). Brief and vivid vignettes of life as most people live it, tuned to epiphanies over coffee in the City Caf‚.