ROSE

An occasionally interesting but out-of-focus story about a girl-child named Rose (make what you will of the fact that the protagonist and author share a moniker), written by Sigmund Freud's great-granddaughter. Boyt's first novel was called Sexual Intercourse (1990); this one could be subtitled Sexual Abuse, since it chronicles the way Rose's stepfather molested her—and not even very secretly—throughout her childhood. Actually, though, it's the trappings of Rose's youth that are most compelling. Her earliest memories are of sailing from England to Denmark aboard her new daddy's boat; going eel fishing; making weekly visits to a bathhouse with her sister and brother to wash off the salt spray; enduring a storm at sea; and later settling down in Trinidad, where she watches her mother wrestle with a woman who's come on to stepfather Klaus. Rose is also witness and prisoner to her mother's fecundity (``I only have to look at a naked man to get pregnant''). Thus, every year Rose's mother produces another baby, with Rose soon giving her childhood over to infant care. But she is not fated to linger long at the sidelines of sex, since Klaus begins visiting her in bed. Craving approval and affection, the girl comes to appreciate his attention. Eventually, though, Klaus disappears, and the family spends many grim years in a tatty section of London, where Rose does downers and becomes a teenage tart. Interspersed throughout here are fleeting glimpses of Rose as an adult, experiencing murkily rendered problems with romance. But how the girl's youth informs her life remains a giant question mark. Unsatisfying as a sexual history, and in the end one wishes Boyt could imagine a novel that has to do with something besides sex—like character and plot for starters.