Grief is good in 'You Lost Me There'

YOU LOST ME THERE, by Rosecrans Baldwin. Riverhead, 304 pp., $25.95.

When you are awash in grief, it's hard to know how you will ever move on, what further torments lie in wait, how long this can possibly continue, and how much you should drink while it does. Then, when you least expect it, new information turns up, changing everything . . . or perhaps nothing. You lost your love, now you've lost the comfort of your memories, and the person you shared them with is no longer there to discuss it - or even to give you the password to their computer so you can posthumously spy on them. What do you do?

Rosecrans Baldwin's debut novel, "You Lost Me There," shadows widower Victor Aaron through this process with compassion, realism and humor. Despite the fanfare attending its publication, this is not a huge novel. It is small, intelligent and sweet, set in a coastal town in Maine, focused on the relationships be- tween a set of quirky, endearing characters. Aside from the protagonist, most are women: a sharp-tongued, gin- soaked aunt; a dreadlocked teenage goddaughter; a grad student who writes poetry and entertains in bed as La Loulou.

Aaron, a neuroscientist who runs an Alzheimer's institute (memory is everywhere in this story), lost his wife, Sara, a successful playwright and screenwriter, when her BMW hit a patch of ice. The couple, in their late 50s, had been through a period of estrangement, but right before the accident, Sara came home from Los Angeles to suggest a reconciliation trip to Italy. Three years after her death, Victor finds a set of index cards in Sara's office. On them she had described, for their marriage counselor, turning points in her relationship with Aaron. These cards allow Baldwin to weave in Sara's voice and perspective on the marriage - both in sharp contrast to her husband's. She was the soul-searching artiste, he the dispassionate, logical scientist. He thought they complemented each other perfectly; her take was less glowing.

Victor's continual observation of himself and others give the narration a wry, deadpan flavor. For example, when Victor's goddaughter Cornelia gets fed up with Shostakovich and flees a violin recital, he follows her outside. There he finds her smoking a cigarette. "You know that will kill you," he says. But after she finishes, he duly notes, "Cornelia seemed calmer, though. Perhaps nicotine was good for something." Indeed.

"By Cornelia's age, I had written encyclopedias inside myself on the ways of the universe and the gears of man," Victor observes midway through the novel. "Now I contained about a pamphlet, relating mostly to rodent brains." By the end of the story, though, he has expanded his limits. Reawakening from numbness to survive a suicide attempt, a humiliating public freak-out and another death, he becomes a man with a future as well as a past.