BY THE LIGHT OF MY FATHER’S SMILE
Alice Walker
Random House
$22.95
221 pages

Alice Walker’s first novel in six years begins with a dead man (the father of "By The Light of My Father’s Smile") sitting in a swing, reading his daughter’s thoughts as she drive away. "The recent stirrings that intimated my presence began with her desire to know about angels," he says [p 4].

Here’s a tip. When a book starts out with a title character musing over the life he has recently left, make sure you’ve got on your Sunday best, because you’re in for a bit of a preaching.

And after six years’ absence from the world of literature, Alice Walker has a lot to preach about. "Father’s Smile" revolves around one key event in a family’s existence: after a father discovers his teenage daughter making love with her boyfriend, he locks her in a room and beats her bloody with a belt. The beating traumatizes both daughter and the younger sister who observes it through a keyhole. Neither father nor daughter understand the changes this incident has wrought in their lives until two mystics appear: Irene, a Greek dwarf tarot card-reader and Manuelito, the spirit of a dead Mexican aboriginal warrior, who patiently take their charges through their necessary tasks, lessons, and ceremonies both in life and in death. Between them Irene and Manuelito hit most of the buzzwords of the New Age: the goddessness of women, the godlessness of Christianity, the nobleness of the indigenous, and the evilness of men (unless they recognize the goddessness of women).

Do you know why there is this concept of ‘ladies first’? asked Irene. It is because, in the early days, if we were permitted to walk behind the man, we would run away. If we were kept in front, they could keep an eye on us. Later on, as we became more tame, they hated to think a woman they desired would only think of running away, and so they invented chivalry. Gallantry. The lifting over puddles, the handing into carriages.

There is nothing wrong with an author having a point to make in a novel, even a point the reader does not necessarily agree with. Arguably the best American novel ever written was "Gone With The Wind," Margaret Mitchell’s successful attempt to resurrect the soiled image of Southern slavers; not far behind on the short list would be Alice Walker’s own "The Color Purple," a loud, clear cry against male oppression of women. But both "Wind" and "Purple" sent us as readers on boats rushing down the whitewater streams of swift-moving story lines. Like Huck Finn we reach the mouth of the Mississippi much wiser from the trip, without ever realizing we have been in school.

But Walker, who showed in both "The Color Purple" and her earlier "Meridian" that she is an excellent storyteller, has forgotten to bring a story to "Father’s Smile." It is a meandering effort, a car stuck in hubcap-deep mud, moving alternately backward and forward in time, ultimately getting nowhere.

One thing Walker did not forget to bring along in "Father’s Smile," though, is a Kama Sutra-full of graphic sex. The first few chapters are full of some of the most detailed lovemaking scenes I have ever read. Don’t misunderstand; this is not like the Starr Report. These are beautiful, beautiful passages...some of the best of Walker’s writing, and she remains a very good descriptive writer. But they are annoyingly out of place; they advance neither character nor story, but rather overshadow the rest of the novel, like Narcissus seemingly only interested in their own appearance.

Near the end of the book, the father has begun to grasp the necessary lessons.

You are saying, are you not, [the father] said to [the mystic], that stories have more room in them than ideas?

That is correct, Señor. It is as if ideas are made of blocks. Rigid and hard. And stories are made of gauze that is elastic. You can almost see through it, so what is beyond is tantalizing. You can’t quite make it out; and because the imagination is always moving forward, you yourself are constantly stretching. Stories are the way spirit is exercised.

Oh, my. One gets the impression that the mystic was really talking to Alice Walker. One wishes that she had only been paying attention.