ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, January 28, 1996               TAG: 9601300122
SECTION: BOOKS                    PAGE: F-4  EDITION: METRO 
                                             TYPE: BOOK REVIEW 
SOURCE: MARY ANN JOHNSON BOOK PAGE EDITOR 

BOOKMARKS

PETE & SHIRLEY: The Great Tar Heel Novel.

Edited by David Perkins. Down Home Press. $13.95.

The section of North Carolina we consider neighbor - Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, the Research Triangle - is rich in literary talent; Clyde Edgerton, Lee Smith, Tim McLaurin, Kaye Gibbons, Jill McCorkle and countless others hail from that area. The temptation to get them together, "passing around some moonshine and seeing what happens," was understandably irresistible to David Perkins, book editor of Raleigh's News & Observer.

It is apparent the 17 writers who participated in this serial novel enjoyed the exercise. Edgerton begins and ends this whodunit, and in between the others pick up the story, carry it along briefly (and not always logically) and hand off with obvious relief to the next. They play with the story, tease one another and work free of artistic concerns.

Perkins is right when, in the afterword, he writes that "Pete & Shirley" demonstrates why novels should be written by one person. But this is a lark. That's all it pretends to be and that's all it need be.

Bookmarks is a regular feature of the book page which will focus on books, writers and literary events of local and regional interest and importance.

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