EDDIE AND BELLA

From Wilson (Loose Jam, 1990, not reviewed), a story of life and love on the road that has a few surprises and some enjoyable moments.

Raphael (formerly known as Eddie) once had a love affair with someone he never forgot: Bella Kipper, a beleaguered single mother of two little girls. Raphael is a minor poet with major pretensions, and Bella’s no prize for a womanizer like him, what with her frizzy black hair, hawklike nose, and world-weary air. But all the same, Raphael worships the ground her chapped heels walk on—even though Bella twits Raphael mercilessly about his literary ambitions—and the two begin a brief, stormy affair. Living in a coastal California town with little to do but wait tables, daydream, and whiff the mingled smells of kelp and patchouli, the lovers fight—and part company. Starting at the historical moment when being stoned was still a statement and the Doobie Brothers were the happening band, Raphael begins a desultory journey of sorts, criss-crossing the country and occasionally hearing news of Bella, who seems to be always one step ahead of him. Her daughters Darshon and Sage grow up more or less on the road, suffering through their mother’s hegira somehow and providing much-needed comic relief with obligatory teenager snottiness. As Eddie (who takes back his more prosaic original name) travels to and through New Orleans, Texas, Boston, and innumerable other places, he meets up with assorted seedy characters, none of whom has anything to teach him that he doesn’t already know. In due time, he hooks up with Bella again, and it’s as if they’d just met: Eddie is still inexplicably awestruck by the self-absorbed Bella.

Wilson has a knack for raffish characterization but little desire for structure; stuffing two decades of life on the fringe into 300 pages is no small feat, but a plot would’ve been nice.