Boys and Their Baby Book

The implausible plot of this debut novel by a Boston College professor sets Adam, a 30-year-old newcomer to 1980s San Francisco, in the midst of sexual electricity zapping him from all sides. The players include hunky Huck, an old Yale pal who is now his roommate and mentor; Lucille, a tall blonde cabaret singer; Amy, a fellow teacher at a prep school, and Conrad, his obsessive teenage student. Still, the unlikely scenario pulls the reader along as we wonder what Adam himself ponders: is he straight, gay, or bi or what? The story is told in Adam's voice and through Adam's self-absorbed letters to his professorial mother and a snippy ex-girlfriend back in New England. A foil to all the sexual tension Christopher, Adam's 11-month-old son who is nauseatingly cute and precocious from beginning to end. The suspense factor involves Miriam, an erratic artist who was briefly Huck's girlfriend and bore him Christopher before being dragged off to the asylum. When we learn that Miriam has been released from the hospital and is now stalking Huck, it is all too predictable for her to show up at Christopher's first birthday party. The tale winds up with everyone safe, satisfied and at least mildly happy (except for shadowy Miriam, sent packing back to the asylum), but we realize Adam's sexual identity is still murky. The best we can fathom is that Adam has emerged from the gauntlet mostly straight but leaning toward BFF devotion to Huck & Son. Get thee to a therapist, Adam; you still have issues.