MY FATHER’S GEISHA by James Gordon...

MY FATHER’S GEISHA by James Gordon Bennett (Washington Square Press: $8). Bennett’s promising first novel focuses on the problems of growing up as an “army brat� during the Cold War era. Teddy, the timid, sensitive narrator, watches his parents and sister battle for power and affection in a family that acts with an idiosyncratic mixture of discretion and vulgarity. The most impressive passages capture the narrator’s insecurities, and his desperate wish to heal the family’s hurts. Caught in a three-way tug-of-war for his loyalty, Teddy struggles to maintain his emotional balance, a struggle reflected in spells of physical disequilibrium: “I bend my knees and teeter-totter on the metal bar, knowing that if I tip forward too much or even just open my eyes for a moment, I’ll tumble over, and so I keep them closed, which seems the only way to keep my balance.� Although the beginning and end are well written, “Geisha� sags badly toward the middle, when Bennett introduces an improbably eccentric European psychiatrist as the sister’s husband.