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A poignant first novel, this "journal" is Blair Stewart's effort to record and understand her life. The story is told alternately through narrative and through dramatic dialog, a spontaneous format that effectively underscores Blair's contrasting moods but can be hard on the reader. The issues, though, are important to readers in the 1990s?commitment, AIDS, guilt, drug use, infidelity, and motherhood vs. a career. The Stewart family (parents Blair and Len, their two children, and their pets) includes Collin Williams?a perennial employee/friend/guest who is also Blair's closest confidant over the course of 20 years. Though he is somewhat childlike and certainly not without his faults, Collin adds an important dimension to family life and particularly to the parents' tenuous marriage. Tenney's insight and empathy as she delineates Blair's many struggles make this bittersweet work a joy to read. General readers?particularly older women, who can identify with Blair?should enjoy this.?Ellen R. Cohen, Rockville, Md. Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information.

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Tenney's debut novel, a heartfelt but unfocused tale primarily about a frustrated housewife's relationship with a man of ``childlike'' qualities, is notable for its unusual format, in which narrative prose alternates with dialogue presented in playscript form. (The author's background includes many years as an actress, screenwriter and theater manager.) Narrator Blair Stewart recounts her early love for acting, and her whirlwind romance and marriage to fellow actor Leonard. In the mid-1970s, Leonard moves his wife and children from Manhattan to Falls Village, Conn. Blair, lonely in this rural community, is drawn to ``walking scarecrow'' Collin Williams, and soon invites him to move in with the Stewarts. Over the next 20 years, Collin becomes Blair's confidant, gardener and houseman; during this time, Blair returns to the stage, in regional theater. Surprising revelations about Collin teach Blair some hard lessons about herself, and others. Although Blair is a sympathetic character, her story doesn't cohere. Torn between accounts of her yearnings as an actress and the tale of her relationship with Collin, the narrative reads choppily, even haphazardly, its disjointed quality accentuated by the unusual format. The knowledge that comes to Blair (for example, that ``all diseases... might have been brought on by lack of faith in ourselves and in others'') seems troweled on, as if to give this novel a cohesiveness it otherwise lacks. Author tour. (Sept.) Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information.