No Yucky Parts

By R.Z. Sheppard

If Nicholson Baker's The Everlasting Story of Nory (Random House; 226 pages; $22) gets anywhere near a best-seller list, it will have something to do with the everlasting story of Monica, which by now would have been remaindered were it not for the everlasting investigation of Kenneth. Vox, Baker's 1992 best seller about phone sex, was rumored to have been a gift by Lewinsky to the President. Starr's effort to subpoena Washington-bookstore records had predictable results: the public was offended, and sales of Baker's alleged fly opener rose 200%.

Nory will disappoint the prurient. Baker has set aside his facility for high porn to convey affectionately the budding world of a nine-year-old girl. Eleanor ("Nory") Winslow is an American spending part of a year in an English village with her parents and younger brother. Mom teaches them "to be honest and not to hurt people's feelings." Dad writes books "that help people go to sleep."

Think of Nory as Charlie Brown with a richer imagination and keener insights. On visual and verbal communication, for example: "Stained glass was invented to tell stories in pictures because so few people could read back then. Now we have to read twenty-five books just to figure out what the stained glass is saying, so it's the opposite of before, when you didn't read but just looked around and thought."

Which is what Nory does, everlastingly. Without a discernible beginning, middle or end, Baker's delightful change of pace can be summed up as: an American girl abroad looks around and thinks. Her observations and reflections are presented in 54 short, numbered sections. Reading them is similar to listening to a series of piano etudes, each with its own theme playfully developed. Baker's neat trick is to make the difficult task of conveying an emerging childhood consciousness look easy and innocent. There are no yucky parts. As Nory, pretending to be her mother, says, "There are, it is true, many terrible things in real life, but you two are young and you don't need to know about all of them yet." This one's for Chelsea.

--By R.Z. Sheppard