Books: Woman on a Ledge

THE SHATTERED GLASS (337 pp.)—Jean Ariss—Knopf ($4.95).

Her mood was that of a woman on a window ledge deciding whether or not to jump. She had just lost her only son through a fatal illness; her marriage was on the rocks, and her husband had gratefully fled to a new job in another state.

When she met the new man, he appeared as a rescuer. Slow-spoken, with "a crooked, diffident smile" and an endless supply of incredible stories, he snapped her out of her navel-staring apathy. A brilliant architect, he claimed to be trapped by an indifferent wife, a hostile mother and a satanic father—a millionaire who made his own laws and found pleasure in destroying whatever his son created. Unlikely as these stories seemed, each one that the woman investigated invariably checked out. All of her dammed up passion and maternity were placed at the man's service. Her resources of love, she thought, were as vast as the ocean. But she had never before met anyone like the man: his need was as deep as the pit of hell, and as terrible.

This second novel by Author Jean (The Quick Years) Ariss, 47, a Californian with an artist-husband and five children, is flawed by her refusal to give proper names to her leading characters. As in a morality play, they are labeled the man, the woman, the father. Another seeming handicap is that the man proves to be a confirmed alcoholic who re-enacts the Lost Weekend gamut from DTs to strait jackets to the shameless cadging of money and sympathy.

But the novel triumphs because it is a beautifully rendered love story and not a tract on alcoholism. More important than the man's falls from the wagon are his stubborn returns to sobriety and his fierce determination to be worthy of the woman and himself. He fails ultimately, going down again and again before the woman finally gives up her futile attempts at rescue. But only hope has faded; love has not. "He's like a child." she thinks at the end, watching the deterioration of his mind and body. But she adds: "If you have a child whose brain isn't developing properly, you don't turn against him, [or] love him less."