A BIG STORM KNOCKED IT OVER
By Laurie Colwin
HarperCollins 259 pp.
Reviewed by Kate Lehrer

WHEN Laurie Colwin died last year, the world lost a fine writing talent, whose capacity for enchantment and comedy received all too little recognition. Without fanfare or drumroll Colwin sent-up old-line Wasps, their Jewish counterparts, and the nouveau riche of all persuasions. She gave us something of a cross between Noel Coward's drawing room and Jane Austen's domestic parlor, all wrapped in a most contemporary setting and sensibility. Her voice is so gentle and playful, it's easy to be lulled into a false sense of security, for the lightness in her prose belies the harsh message underneath: Families fail us, anxieties abound, loss is inevitable.

From the first sentences of Laurie Colwin's A Big Storm Knocked It Over, beguiling words and an engaging ambience combine to seduce us. In this posthumously published book, we are brought into the pleasant, civilized world of four thoroughly likable New Yorkers. That we've encountered similar characters before in her writings only adds to the contentment.

Jane Louise, a graphic artist in a publishing company which may or may not be up for grabs, has recently married Teddy, a good-natured chemist, subject to occasional bouts of despondency. Now in her thirties, she has finally found someone she could both fall in love with and marry. She revels in domesticity, prefers order, likes short skirts, baggy sweaters and bracelets. In her spare time, she contemplates the day she'll have a baby.

To make her life even cozier, her best friend Edie, a caterer with very rich clients, plans to join her in motherhood and then marry Mokie, her business partner and lover. Besides simultaneous pregnancies, another bond among the four is their estrangement from their own families.

On the whole, they've managed pretty well to have satisfying lives, not lacking in material comfort, rewarding jobs, good sex, good health and even love. When the pregnancies occur, life looks complete.

Yet old shadows haunt, and Jane Louise in particular manages to make herself miserable in spite of her most fortunate circumstances. For one thing, her family moved around a lot, leaving her feeling always the outsider. For another, her temperament is such that she has an acutely developed fear of the random horrors in this life. When her beloved Teddy broods, as he is wont to do, her sense of precariousness is heightened even more.

For yet another, she can't dismiss her attraction to her boss, Sven Michaelson, a seducer of the first order. Sex is his way of filling the void (his term), and pregnant women are his objects of choice. So far, she has not succumbed to his charms, but he unsettles her, partly because of his own dark view of life. She is also drawn to him as a life force; but as Eros, he is death, too, and dramatizes her internal conflict, especially troubling when she longs for a neat and tidy emotional world. Richter scale in comparison with the inner doubts.

Finally both the battle and the pregnancy began to wear, and I found myself wanting to tell Jane Louise to snap out of it. Sure, horrible things can happen and do, and imaginations run amok; but lighten-up already. I also could have done with a little less of the joys and tribulations attending new babies -- though, if I had been a new mother, I might have enjoyed it more. (Possibly, had the author lived, she would have tightened up all this, in much the way she edited her short story "Passion

Yet even when Jane Louise began to wear, Colwin's wit and insight kept me hanging in there. For the most part, the main characters feel like nothing so much as good friends, a little tiresomeness notwithstanding, whom it would be nice to see again.

Although this is not Colwin's best-crafted book, it does deal with most of the themes in her fiction, including her note of promise. For she also tells us that a friend, a meal, a laugh bring comfort; and if we apply ourselves and have a little luck along the way, every now and again we might relax and enjoy the other side of life: the wonder of it all.

When this book came my way, I was delighted, because I've been a big fan of Laurie Colwin's and mourned her untimely death last year for the very selfish reason that I would no longer have the pleasure of opening afresh one of her books to savor on a night calling for some special friends. I am grateful she provided this one last opportunity.