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July 6, 1997
New and Noteworthy Paperbacks
By LAUREL GRAEBER

AT A CENTURY'S ENDING: Reflections, 1982-1995
By George F. Kennan. Norton, $15.
The former diplomat looks at American foreign policy, revealing his dismay at the militarization of the cold war and his conviction that the Soviet Union destroyed itself. Much of the writing is ''brilliant; almost all of it is marked by a gentleness of spirit,'' Fareed Zakaria said here last year.

THE STATEMENT
By Brian Moore. William Abrahams/Plume, $11.95.
Pierre Brossard is a Frenchman with a past -- a past involving not only collaboration with the Vichy Government during World War II but also the murder of Jews. For decades he has evaded justice, but now his pursuers are closing in. In a novel inspired by the real-life flight of Paul Touvier, Moore shows how Brossard's situation reflects the moral ambivalence of both French politicians and the Roman Catholic Church. In 1996 our reviewer, Eugen Weber, described the book as ''a straightforward shocker, a psychological thriller, a chase and travelogue through France, a religio-political conundrum -- any way you take it, this is first-class fare.''

THE ART OF THE NEW YORKER, 1925-1995
By Lee Lorenz. Knopf, $25.
It is ironic that a magazine whose reputation rests on literary quality should be so prized for its cartoons. But Lorenz, who has edited them for almost 25 years, shows just why they have become an art form. His book ''informs and delights,'' Ben Yagoda said in these pages in 1995. One of The New Yorker's legendary contributors is examined in JAMES THURBER: His Life and Times, by Harrison Kinney (Owl/Holt, $19.95). It discusses Thurber exhaustively, from his love of dogs to his misogyny to his eventual blindness. Yagoda, also our reviewer for this book in 1995, said of Kinney that ''one tends to trust his thoroughly researched conclusions.''

WORST FEARS
By Fay Weldon. Atlantic Monthly, $12.
What, indeed, could be worse than finding out that your husband has died and that he has been unfaithful and that none of your friends are to be trusted? This is the predicament confronting Alexandra Ludd, an actress. Weldon has ''filed down a few sharp edges in 'Worst Fears,' and that makes it one of her best novels yet,'' Karen Karbo wrote here last year.

GEOGRAPHY OF THE HEART: A Memoir
By Fenton Johnson. Washington Square/Pocket Books, $12.
This is a love story about two men: the author, a novelist, and Larry Rose, a teacher who died in 1990 of complications from AIDS. Johnson reflects on the years before they met as well as on the life they shared. He ''marries his eye for detail with graceful writing,'' Ted Loos said in these pages in 1996. An abbreviated life is also celebrated in WINTER'S LIGHT: Reflections of a Yankee Queer, by John Preston, edited by Michael Lowenthal (University Press of New England, $14.95). In these essays Preston, a journalist who succumbed to AIDS in 1994, writes of an unassuming childhood in Massachusetts, followed by an awakening and years of activism in Portland, Me. ''He leaves behind a splendid road map for anyone seeking a balanced and dignified life,'' Charles Kaiser wrote in the Book Review in 1995. YOUNG MAN FROM THE PROVINCES: A Gay Life Before Stonewall, by Alan Helms (Avon, $12), describes a journey from a repressed and bitter Midwestern childhood to an intoxicating but empty whirl in New York. Helms's cautionary tale is ''one to heed, one to read,'' Steven Bach said here in 1995.

SLEEPER SPY
By William Safire. St. Martin's, $6.99.
If anything could awaken a sleeper spy, it's the fall of his Government. Thus in 1989 a Soviet mole in the American banking industry is suddenly sought by various Russians and two American reporters. ''There doesn't seem to be anything in the realm of word and image that William Safire can't do,'' Morton Kondracke wrote in these pages in 1995.

THE GIANT'S HOUSE: A Romance
By Elizabeth McCracken. Avon, $12.
Librarians are often stereotyped, and Peggy Cort, the narrator, at first fits the mold: stern, unmarried, more tender toward books than people. But then she falls in love with a doomed, outsize young man. ''McCracken unpacks her metaphors with the intensity of a poet,'' our reviewer, Diana Postlethwaite, wrote last year.

BEAMING SONNY HOME
By Cathie Pelletier. Washington Square/Pocket Books, $12.
Mattie Gifford's son is on television, but it's nothing she can brag about: he's taken two women and a dog hostage in a trailer. And Mattie, a widow in her 60's, has to face the biggest crisis of her crisis-filled life. This novel is ''both funny and unexpectedly moving,'' Ruth Coughlin said in the Book Review last year.

THE FREQUENCY OF SOULS
By Mary Kay Zuravleff. Penguin, $11.95.
Radio waves carry interesting messages, and Niagara Spense is sure that some of them come from the dead. But it's her own kookiness that haunts her mild, married office mate, George, like an old song. Their romance makes for an ''engaging first novel,'' Janet Kaye wrote here in 1996.

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