Hex, aghast at the mountain of responsibility that is suddenly his, with equal suddenness '' doesn't care. Doesn't give a damn. He doesn't have to diaper her right now, at this exact moment . . . The alert made him happy. Jane, boxed into the ladies' room at the restaurant with Hex and his mother and her wheelchair, wielding the catheter tubing with its petrochemical lubricant, ''concludes that this moment is sort of romantic. . . .
Romance is in the hearts of people who have abandoned romance.
Mr. Moody, who is also the author of the novels ''The Ice Storm'' and ''Garden State,'' has been compared to John Cheever, with ample justification. He has the same knockabout whimsy careering into keen lament. He's also funnier, and to that degree less reconciled to the world as he finds it. Perhaps this is only to say that John Cheever belonged to midcentury, while Rick Moody is a chronicler of the middle class for the millennium. Janet Burroway is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University, where she teaches literature.