“Tea“ Stacey D'Erasmo. Algonquin Books, 317 pages, $21.95, Jan.2000.
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There are intimations of greatness in Stacey D'Erasmo's first novel, Tea. D'Erasmo writes with a strength and daring that makes reading her a breathtaking pleasure. Tea is a portrait of Isabel Gold at three stages of life: as a girl, a teenager, and a young woman. The novel also sets out, ambitiously, to capture three decades in American popular culture. D'Erasmo's debut novel is poetic and precise, evocative and captivating.

"Morning" describes Isabel as a elementary school girl in Philadelphia, in the days leading up to the suicide of her mother, Cassie. In "Afternoon," the family, without Cassie, has moved to Springston, a small Pennsylvania city. Teenage Isabel discovers that she is attracted to girls, not boys, and that she wants to be a famous person, probably an actress. In "Evening," the novelÕs third section, Isabel is just out of college and living in New York City. Still haunted by the riddle of her motherÕs cruelty, Isabel falls in and out of love with art, the city, and her girlfriend, Thea.

What makes Tea consistently delightful is D'Erasmo's comic touch. In the midst of the story of a girl about to lose her mother, the author uncovers the obscure logic of childhood friendship. Here is young Isabel's view of her best friend, Ann.

"I'll baptize you later if you want," said Ann, cracking her knuckles. Ann was spectacularly double-jointed, and a Baptist. She had been reborn last year at Bible camp; since then, she said, she took Jesus with her everywhere, even to the bathroom. She could say the Lord's Prayer as fast as if it wereÉ supercalifragilisticexpialidociousÉ Ann was also extremely good with glue, even though she herself seemed to be held together with string.

D'Erasmo's ability to poke fun at her characters serves her well, particularly in the latter pages of the novel. With gentle satire, with as much compassion for young artists and lovers as pity for their struggles and pretensions, D'Erasmo recreates the culture of New York's East Village in the early eighties.

[Their film] didn't have a title yet; [Isabel and Thea] couldn't find the phrase that encompassed, or referenced, all the myriad things their film was. It was political. It was nonlinear. It was diffuse. It made use of film as film the celluloid itself was to be scratched, bitten, torn, painted on, and generally roughed up. Thea was planning to do the biting herself. Isabel would do the painting, although she couldnÕt really paint, but that was part of the point. Isabel had written most of the dialogue; Thea was going to do most of the filming, although Isabel would do some, too. They shared a deep sense of ethics about women and equipment.

As strong as are the first and third parts of Tea the heart of the novel is the longer middle section, "Afternoon." Carrying the shroud of her mother's suicide with her, Isabel struggles with the frustrations of a gay teenager in straight America. She is drawn to her best friend, Lottie, but Lottie has a boyfriend, Ben. Then Isabel meets Rebecca, who manages an experimental theater company, "The Well," in downtown Philadelphia. The city, and the company of working actors, are revelations to Isabel. Her identity takes shape around her experiences on- and offstage. At the cast party after IsabelÕs first night as a performer, she makes a journey that changes her.

Leaning forward out of her white webbed metal chair with a certainty that seemed even at that moment more gravity than volition, Isabel kissed Rebecca fully, and softly, and with an expertise that she had never managed with [her boyfriend] JordyÉ. Laying her hand gently along Isabel's cheekbone, Rebecca drew Isabel to her, and then gently parted Isabel's lips with her tongue, opening her mouth to Isabel's mouth in such a way that Isabel felt the skin all along her breast wake upÉ

The three-part structure of Tea brings both opportunities and difficulties to D'Erasmo. Because she chooses to divide the novel into three distinct stories widely separated in time, significant questions are left unanswered. When, and how, does Cassie die? What comes of Isabel's love for Rebecca? Finally, how does Thea decide to up and leave Isabel over a weekend? These ambiguities detract from the reader's sense of the completeness of Isabel's story.

What is gained by the three-part structure is a kind of cultural specificity. Traveling from one decade to the next, D'Erasmo documents the moods and settings of her generation. D'Erasmo conjures up Isabel's basement playroom in 1968, her cashier's post at a Pier I in Springston in 1978, the interior of Isabel and Thea's railroad tenement in the East Village in 1983. The clear break between sections of the novel allows D'Erasmo to explore three distinct moments in the recent American past.

At once a portraitist and a keen social observer, Stacey D'Erasmo reveals herself in her first book as a writer without boundaries, a writer of sparkling talent. Tea will no doubt be remembered as one of the significant novels of the year.

Paul Kafka, a novelist in Somerville, Massachusetts, reviews regularly for The Chronicle,The Boston Globe, and The Dallas Morning News. He and his wife Patricia Gibbons just had a baby boy, Gabriel.

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