Full Terms of Endearment

By NADYA LABI

The love between mothers and daughters can weather a thousand tiny betrayals. What teenage girl has not grimaced, on occasion, at the spectacle of her mother's perceived inadequacies? And that contempt can flow easily, prompted by no more than a gesture of unwanted maternal affection. Nor are mothers above sin, particularly when their daughters threaten to surpass them.

Elizabeth Strout tests the strength of that umbilical bond in her first novel, Amy and Isabelle (Random House; 304 pages; $22.95). In the small New England town of Shirley Falls, Isabelle Goodrow is a single mother with a shameful secret: her daughter Amy, 16, is illegitimate. As if in atonement for her youthful fling, Isabelle is now, in her early 30s, the image of propriety, maintaining perfect posture and an immaculate French twist. She craves respectability but is too poor for the upper echelon of Shirley Falls and too proud to befriend her co-workers at the mill. Amy shares her isolation, and an intense connection is born of their mutual dependency. Still, Isabelle yearns for more--her boss, sex, an existence outside the lonely one she shares with her child: she "could not bear to stop thinking that her real life would happen somewhere else."

It happens in a high school classroom when Thomas Robertson, a fortyish substitute math teacher, takes notice of Amy, who has inherited her mother's shyness but none of her plainness. When Robertson urges Amy to "come on out...everybody's been asking about you," she complies in ways that she, and certainly Isabelle, never imagined.

Mother and daughter become rivals, and the balance of power between them shifts inexorably in favor of Amy as she, not Isabelle, discovers love. For Isabelle, it is painful recompense for what she considers a lifetime of sacrifice. Strout's insights into the complex psychology between the pair result in a poignant tale about two comings of age. Amy blossoms with a heady awareness of her sexuality. Meanwhile, Isabelle forgives herself the past, even as she faces its consequences: "It was bewildering to Isabelle. Bewildering that you could harm a child without even knowing, thinking all the while you were being careful, conscientious." Strout, with this assured debut, shows compassion for both.

--By Nadya Labi