MY LIFE & DR. JOYCE BROTHERS, by Kelly Cherry.
I came at this trilogy from-the-middle-out. Yeah, this is the first book in a Nina Bryant trilogy, and I read the middle book, THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS, first. But I don't think it really matters, since each of the books also stands alone perfectly well. Each of them is presented as a collection of connected stories, but the stories can stand alone too. In fact many of the stories were first published elsewhere. No matter, because Kelly Cherry knits them all together in a masterful fashion, creating a tapestry of a time, a place, and - especially - a family. Or maybe two families: one of them Nina Bryant's first family, which consisted of her parents, classically trained violinists who, to their children's detriment, may have cared too much for their art; her brother, seven years older; and Nina, the baby of the family. And then there will be/is Nina's own family: a much longed for adopted daughter, and her unnamed "little dog."

This book is perhaps a bit easier to follow than the FRIENDS book, if only because Nina is central to each story, which was not true of the second book, which gave thumbnail lives of several of her friends in a close-knit neighborhood of Madison, Wisconsin, where Nina is a teacher of writing at the University. In the course of the stories we learn much about Nina's parents, who struggled through the lean years of the Great Depression, clinging fast to their music. And about her wastrel brother, spoiled and dissolute, a self-centered alcoholic womanizer and 'artist,' worshipped by Nina as a child. Sadly, her brother sexually abused her, a dark family secret from which Nina, now forty-ish, is still struggling to recover, even as she also is trying to get over a man she was deeply in love with who dumped her for someone else. This after an early failed marriage and a short stint in a mental hospital following a half-hearted suicide attempt. Although Nina is a successful writer and professor with advanced degrees, her self-esteem is obviously in the toilet. ("For twenty years I had felt like a piece of shit ...") She joins a Survivors of Incest group and spends much of her time mulling over her personal life and furtively sampling self-help books, like the Brothers book, WHAT EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW ABOUT MEN. Hence the title. Nina knows plenty about men, most of it not good, unfortunately. But she has found a sensitive confidante and 'friend with benefits' in Rajan, a darkly handsome toy designer and divorced father of two teenage sons. She also becomes a temporary caretaker for her brother's pregnant thirteen year-old daughter. I mean there is SO MUCH going on in this story, and Nina Bryant is simply a fascinating character with a lot on her plate. I kept thinking, as I made my way through these stories, "this woman could use a hug."

The book concludes with a kind of dream-like sequence in which Nina is telling her daughter a bedtime story, a story which is also "to herself, so perhaps it is a dream she is dreaming, or a kind of dream. Her child and her dog sleep on."

Oddly, I was reminded of the closing dream-like scenes from the Coen brothers film, RAISING ARIZONA, and its voice-over refrain of "And I dreamed on." Or maybe not so oddly, come to think of it, since the couple in that film were, like Nina Bryant, desperate to have a child. (I know, I know. That film was a comedy; so I should probably point out that Nina is not without an endearingly dry and sometimes even bawdy sense of humor despite her so often sad circumstances.) In point of fact, the final book of the Nina trilogy is titled A KIND OF DREAM. I can't wait to read it. In the meantime, Nina, hang in there; and, before I forget, here's a hug. My highest recommendation. ( )

Cherry's ( Augusta Played ) "novel in stories" is such a mixture of the irritating and the insightful that its appeal will be a matter of individual taste. Narrator Nina, fearing the approach of middle age, struggles to heal the scars left by an incestuous assault and makes some real progress, at the same time remaining obsessed with the last man to dump her. In the first three stories especially, Nina's stability, suggested in the title, bogs down in psychobabble as she pursues, then rues, the offerings of psychiatry. The reader's patience is rewarded in the later sections, however, as Nina stops being the slave of theories and allows herself to experience relationships more naturally. Given the weak and tangled psyche to which we are originally introduced, Nina's ultimate transformation lacks a degree of credibility, but Cherry does achieve a unique portrait.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. (Publishers Weekly)