GOOD PEOPLES
By Marcus Major
Dutton
272 pp
$23.95

Novelists are unrepentent thieves for the most part, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Scratch any novel and you'll usually sniff out the scent of stories past. For most books this is not a problem because a) novelists tend to try to emulate the best of the breed (Faulkner, Hemingway, Morrison, et al.), so that even if they fall short of the mark, at least they've aimed high; and b) novels are such a mix-and-match of character and setting and plotline that by the time it all gets sifted through the author's sieve it becomes a brand-new product, regardless of its genesis.

There are two problems with Marcus Major's first-time novel, "Good Peoples," however: first) he's chosen to emulate the work of an exceptionally weak author, Terry McMillan, who, despite her tremendous popularity, is a poor technician, and second) Major either can’t or doesn't try to disguise the fact that this is pretty much a straight out copy job. In the end, it's a second-rate effort all around.

"Good Peoples" has its inspiration in "How Stella Got Her Groove Back," McMillan’s unremarkable semi-autobiographical novel about a financially independent, middle age African-American woman’s love affair with a young and gorgeous Jamaican boy-man. "Stella" was more like a Fantasy Island letter sent home from a beach vacation than a serious novel. The writing was dull and wooden, conflict was practically nonexistent, and most obstacles were set up and cast away within a page and a half, or less.

Major is nothing if not a good mimic. If "Good Peoples" is not semi-autobiographical, he certainly wants us to think it is (no coincidence that the author and the handsome and muscular hero of the tale--Myles Moore--have the same initials, and that the book’s protagonist is an aspiring novelist). Unable to score with women on his own, Myles gets fabulously lucky when he is set up by a friend with a stunningly-beautiful, financially successful Cuban-American woman, Marisa Marrero. The first half of the novel is taken up by the two getting to know each other...little else...and Major is 215 pages into a 260 page total before the only serious conflict surfaces.

As was true in "Stella," "Good Peoples" has the potential for an interesting read, with a background that includes both Philadelphia’s colorful African-American and Latino neighborhoods and as well as a heroine who came to America in Cuba’s Mariel boatlift, but Major seems to be without the writing skill to pull it off. His writing is stiff and stilted, as if he typed it while looking at himself in the mirror, as in his recounting of a playground basketball game:

"Myles inbounded the ball to Vince to signal the beginning of the transformation. Every Saturday morning the group of them would change from decent, reason-minded adults to bickering children with delusions of athletic grandeur. Some of them took their basketball so seriously, you would think their audience were NBA scouts offering multimillion-dollar contracts instead of five indifferent children and two apathetic women. ... This particular game was nip and tuck."

Finally, like McMillan, Major seems to have no feel for the rhythm of dialogue, or how or when to end it.

On the bookjacket, Major lists a degree in literature from Richard Stockton College. Given all the good authors he had to read, surely he could find a better one than Terry McMillan to emulate.