What it means to be a child

At the heart of Make Believe, a novel by Joanna Scott (Back Bay,$13.95), is a little boy so tossed by the emotions of flawed adultsthat the reader sees only a bleak future for him. It's not the stufffor people who like happy endings, but mature readers would bemissing a real treat in passing it up. Rarely does a writer do sofine a job of getting at the hodgepodge of thoughts, rationalizationsand fantasies that jostle for position in the minds of hercharacters.

She starts with three-year-old Kamon, nicknamed Bo. The book openswith Bo reflecting on the bewildering possibility that he had somehowdone something to displease his mother. She gets angry about a lot ofthings and here he is, somehow hanging upside down, his clothes amess. Was she still angry that he had caused some groceries to falloff the shelf at the store? Where is she? Did she walk away to showher displeasure? As Bo continues trying to sort things out, itbecomes evident he has been in an auto accident. Emergency crews arejust arriving. His young mother lies dead somewhere beyond his lineof sight.

The author will return often to Bo's interior world, as she doesto that of his mother, father and grandparents, making sense of theirbehavior, even when what they do is irrational and destructive.

Bo's mother, Jenny, was a high school senior, aching to get awayfrom life with a steadfast stepfather and flighty mom, when she metBo's dad, Kamon, at a gas station. She succeeded in her ambition whenshe became pregnant and Eddie, her stepfather, threw her out of thehouse. Her behavior was immoral, Eddie righteously knows, the more sosince she was white and Kamon black. Then, just two months before Bois born, his father is shot and killed in a holdup.

Now comes the accident and Bo is orphaned. Suddenly Jenny'sstepfather feels a new call for righteousness and wins custody of Boin a battle with the boy's black grandparents, who had been baby-sitting the boy since his birth. But Bo doesn't buy in and becomesincreasingly disruptive. Eddie loses control and hurts the child. Boruns off onto the thin ice of a nearby lake. His grandmother comesafter him, falls in and drowns. Eddie flees town and Bo goes to livewith his other set of grandparents.

So that's the plot. And at every step of the way you, the reader,will be led to understand what prompts the muddled behavior thatleads to these disasters and to feel a degree of sympathy even forEddie, the stepfather. But chief among Scott's accomplishments inthis novel is her daring, extensive re-creation of a child'sthoughts. Rarely does anything Bo is thinking seem out of tune. Andbecause of that you will learn again-emotionally if notintellectually-what it means to be a child. This is a strong work,finely written. It will hold your attention.

The Battle for God, by Karen Armstrong (Ballantine, $15). The``battle'' of the title is that being waged by religiousfundamentalists against a secular world. Armstrong looks atfundamentalists among Muslims in Iran and Egypt, Jews in Israel andProtestants in the United States to probe their motivations andconsider what impact they will continue to have.

Desire of the Everlasting Hills, by Thomas Cahill (Anchor, $14).Cahill, author of the enormously popular How the Irish SavedCivilization, continues in this book to look at pivotal moments thataffected the flow of history. This time he looks at the era of Jesus,putting the gospel narratives in the context of their time.

Memoirs of Pontius Pilate, by James R. Mills (Ballantine, $10),and Pontius Pilate, by Ann Wroe (Modern Library, $14.95). In Mills'novel, Pontius Pilate, the Gospels' unforgettable, world-wearyexecutioner of Jesus of Nazareth, in later life becomes intrigued bythe Jewish carpenter and sets out to learn all he can about him. Wroewrites a biography of the Roman procurator, using sources from theera and creatively filling in blanks where only speculation isavailable.

MotherKind, by Jayne Anne Phillips (Vintage, $13). The time oflife when new beginnings-marriage, begetting of children-coincidewith the beginning of the end for aging parents is explored in thisacclaimed novel by the author of Machine Dreams.

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