By Caroline See
McGraw-Hill, 196 pages, $15.95
People roller-skate and like it; they go to seminars held by charismatic pop psychologists and seem interested; women are each others` best friend, and their ex-husbands, never to be trusted, are film directors or radio personalities; and then, of course, there are earthquakes to think about.
Yes, it`s California, Los Angeles to be precise, and Carolyn See`s
``Golden Days`` is set there as firmly as a diamond in a wedding ring. This novel, See`s fourth since 1970, has as its center the story of a friendship between Edith Langley, 38 years old and twice divorced, and Lorna Villanelle, four times divorced and a devout follower of pop psychologist/con man, Lion Boyce.
The story is told by Edith in a disarmingly intimate way. She is forever saying ``Believe me`` and ``Let me tell you`` and ``Here`s the thing,`` as if you were making intimate conversation over lunch at a fashionable restaurant. Then come remarks like this:
``In the late seventies there was still a lot of personal chaos around: I don`t mean `love,` I don`t mean drugs. I mean, when you got up in the morning it was hard to know what syle of underwear to put on, what style of breakfast to eat.``
Fear and worry, introduced lightly above, are of consummate importance in ``Golden Days.`` For in spite of all the glitz and humor (See is very funny), this is a novel about nuclear holocaust, and the last quarter of the book, set from 1987-1990, is about what happens after a ``device`` goes off in Los Angeles.
What message we are supposed to distill from the nuclear disaster is hard to read, but maybe it`s as Edith says when she`s asked if her ``fear of nuclear war is a metaphor for all the other fears that plague us today?`` She says ``No. . . . It`s my view that other fears, all those of which we have spoken, are a metaphor for my fear of nuclear war.``
``Golden Days`` slides back and forth from the 1980s to the 1960s back to the 1980s before it arrives in the future, and it is very much a novel of manners, California division. In fact, there is something almost (Henry)
Jamesian about See`s novel. People have lots of money and we know what they do to earn it, but we never see it happen.
And money is important, very much so. Edith has champagne and chicken livers for breakfast, she gives investment seminars to rich housewives. Men are less important, though certainly of great utility. Here is Edith on that subject: ``We talked about men all the time, but they didn`t figure in our stories.``
Cryptic remarks like this populate ``Golden Days.`` They are consistent with the disingenuous voice of the narrator, but they are also there to make you think. The gravity of See`s novel, not easily visible from the surface, is considerable.
``Golden Days`` is a California novel if ever there was one, and the omnipresent Isn`t-California-wonderful? aspect is a little tiring, but maybe we`re all too used to novels with an Eastern point of view. Behind the hyperstylized veneer is a richly intelligent, culturally discerning novel. Go West.