FICTION

SONGS OF THE HUMPBACK WHALE by Jodi Picoult (Faber and Faber: $22.95; 343 pp.) Jodi Picoult is a more convincing argument for reincarnation than anything Shirley MacLaine has ever written: How could a 26-year-old first novelist have so much knowledge of marriage, of mothering a teen-ager, of separation and reconciliation, unless she’d been down this road before in another guise? Picoult’s imagination is formidable, as is her ambition. She tells the story of Jane and Oliver’s crumbling marriage, or Jane’s running away and their eventual reunion, in five voices--and with details that are so true they hurt. Oliver is the preoccupied researcher who thinks nothing of missing his daughter’s 15th birthday, nothing of moving his wife’s shoes out of her closet to make room for his files, but it is those two bits of disregard that shatter the family, sending Jane into her car half-dressed, her getaway clothes under her arm, only to find her daughter already sitting in the back seat, ready to go with her. If Picoult slides into pretentiousness on the journey, it’s almost a relief. This is a first novel, after all. She has a writing lifetime ahead of her in which to fine-tune her prose.