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New & Noteworthy Paperbacks

By Scott Veale
Published: January 10, 1999

Wolf Solent

By John Cowper Powys. Vintage International, $15.

This British novel, recently restored to print, follows a sensitive young Londoner who returns to an insulated village in his native Dorset and becomes romantically entwined with two vastly different women. '' 'Wolf Solent' is a modern prose 'Hamlet,' '' Percy Hutchison wrote here in 1929. ''The novel is a momentous piece of work . . . of transcendent interest and great beauty.''

God & the American Writer

By Alfred Kazin. Vintage, $14.

A renowned critic and impassioned reader, in his final book before his death last year at the age of 83, argues that classic American writers from Hawthorne to Frost to Faulkner were driven by spiritual passion and a yearning for something like faith, motivations that echo the author's own emotional approach to his subject. ''He strolls from writer to writer as if through the rooms of his own house, occasionally shaking hands, by means of an anecdote, with someone he has known personally,'' Paul Berman wrote in the Book Review in 1997, adding that when Kazin hits his target squarely, ''the effect is spectacular and brilliant.''

Flying Leap: Stories

By Judy Budnitz. Picador USA, $12.

These tales twist familiar middle-class terrain into strange new shapes, creating a world where a local baker creates babies from dough and high school cheerleaders get so charged up at a pep rally that they set themselves on fire. In 1998 our reviewer, J. D. Biersdorfer, called this ''a consistently impressive debut.''

Father, Soldier, son:

Memoir of a Platoon Leader in Vietnam

By Nathaniel Tripp. Steerforth, $14.

In his unflinching account of the horrors of war, an ex- infantry lieutenant also describes his efforts to confront his guilt and achieve manhood through love and family. ''The writing is cathartic, an expiation by a middle-aged man haunted by everything that went wrong in war, in youth, in country,'' David D. Gilmore wrote here in 1997. In Patches of Fire: A Story of War and Redemption, by Albert French (Anchor/Doubleday, $12.95), a black novelist tells how his Vietnam experiences became a wellspring he tapped into after years of struggle in civilian life. ''It is a classic tale, life-affirming and updated for the modern age,'' Terrence Maitland said here in 1997.

The Gun Seller

By Hugh Laurie. Washington Square/Pocket, $14.

The hero of this tongue-in-cheek techno-spy thriller is a dissolute ex-military man who gets sucked into international intrigue involving money launderers, terrorists, arms dealers and, of course, beautiful babes. The result is ''a genuinely witty and sophisticated entertainment,'' Christopher Buckley wrote here in 1997.

Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell

By Deborah Solomon.

Noonday/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.

The author maintains that the secretive artist known for his boxes filled with scraps, cutouts and trinkets was primarily an iconographer and archivist with a basement full of ''source material,'' including files on movie actresses and 19th-century ballerinas. In 1997 our reviewer, James R. Mellow, called this a ''thoroughly detailed, highly informative biography.'' Mary Cassatt: A Life, by Nancy Mowll Mathews (Yale University, $18), shows how the American-born Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) blended her love of painting with a desire for financial success. In 1994 in these pages, Carol Armstrong cited some shortcomings in the author's straight-ahead approach, but said the book was ''thoroughgoing in its resurrection of the contexts and conditions'' of the artist's life.

Where Trouble Sleeps

By Clyde Edgerton. Ballantine, $12.95.

Much of this novel is told by a 6-year-old boy who describes what happens when a stranger in a stolen Buick rolls into sleepy Listre, N.C., in 1950. The book is ''as much the story of a man who brings random badness into a good place as it is the story of a boy's search for his own salvation,'' Mark Childress wrote here in 1997. Rural North Carolina circa 1950 is also the setting for The Big Ballad Jamboree, by Donald Davidson (University Press of Mississippi, $17), which follows the fortunes of a country singer and his sweetheart, who is collecting folk songs for her M.A. thesis. In 1996 in these pages, George Garrett called this ''a lighthearted and (in a musical sense) light-fingered'' novel.

The reichmanns:

Family, Faith, Fortune, and the Empire of Olympia & York

By Anthony Bianco. Times Books/Random House, $20.

This large-scale chronicle tracks the rise and fall of an Orthodox Jewish family that at its peak in the 1980's amassed phenomenal wealth through its international property holdings. In 1997 our reviewer, Mordecai Richler, called the book ''a nicely balanced study.''

The Voice Imitator

By Thomas Bernhard. Translated by Kenneth J.

Northcott. University of Chicago, $10.

The tiny stories in this 1978 collection showcase the Austrian writer's obsessions with hypocrisy, corruption, murder and lunacy -- and especially his contempt for his homeland. ''Bernhard's rage against society'' is ''a highly artistic undertaking,'' Peter Filkins wrote here in 1997. Scott Veale

Photo (DOROTHY ALEXANDER/HARPER COLLINS)
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