The Girls of Summer

By Martha Duffy

OBJECT LESSONS by Anna Quindlen; Random House; 272 pages; $19

What ever happened to the family novel, that sturdy fictional genre that tracked unfolding generations, changing times, hovering fates? Mostly it went commercial, with volumes -- the fatter the better -- designed to be hauled up the best-seller lists. So it is encouraging when a fresh and talented writer takes the category seriously. Anna Quindlen clearly believes in writing what you know. For most of the past decade she has chronicled her husband, their kids, her mother and grandmother in her New York Times columns. Three years ago, many of her pieces were collected in a book, accurately titled Living Out Loud. She tackles serious social issues, but her takeoff point is usually the kitchen.

Set in the 1960s, Object Lessons concerns three generations of a rich Irish clan who live in an established inner suburb of New York City. The patriarch, John Scanlan, is a lively if familiar fictional figure, a power-driven old sinner who started making Communion hosts at 21 and who now has vestment factories in Manila and construction companies closer to home. The Scanlans' milieu has much in common with the author's childhood as depicted in her columns: nuns, summers at the beach and minute, competitive skirmishes among preadolescent girls. Quindlen also relishes skewering pirates like John; to him the Kennedys are merely "second-rate Scanlans with too much hair."

It follows that all his children are in some way weak or stunted. One of them, Tom -- in Pop's cement business -- rebels by marrying a handsome, lower- class Italian girl. It is their daughter Maggie who is trying desperately to master some object lessons during her 12-year-old summer. Though she is much brighter than friends and cousins; they are maturing faster than she; her pregnant mother dallies with an old friend; her grandfather orders her parents to move into a bigger house he has acquired for them and then has a serious stroke.

Quindlen is at her best writing about the dislocations of growing up, the blows a child does not see coming. Maggie's best friend, Debbie Malone, suddenly takes up with a precocious tramp named Bridget Hearn. "There are things that I'm interested in now that you're not that interested in," announces Debbie. "Maybe we're maturing at different rates." Maggie's pretty cousin Monica, a few years older, "has to marry" that summer and seethes with resentment at Maggie's brains and freedom. "You're worse than everyone else because you pretend to be so good," she explodes.

Unfortunately, she may have a point. The vacationing youngsters here are all vividly real -- except for rather smug Maggie, who is the pivot. Her retorts run along the lines of "What is it like to be like you?" to the bitchy Monica. When downcast, Maggie does not lash out but retreats to her room, where yet another chapter ends with quiet tears or staring at the ceiling. She is someone waiting to be -- a writer is hinted, maybe even a columnist. Quindlen's flaw is one of meticulousness: the smart energy of her journalist's voice is missing. But surely she knows that good novels have been written at kitchen tables too.