IN MEMORY OF ANGEL CLARE <i> by Christopher Bram (Plume: $9.95) </i>

In this uneven novel, Christopher Bram attempts to tackle the daunting problem of how to cope with the loss of a young and talented person to AIDS. Months after the death of budding film director Clarence (Clare) Laird, his intellectual New York friends are getting on with their lives and careers, but his former lover, Michael Sousza, remains in limbo. Clare’s friends always regarded him as vacuous and self-involved, and they were apparently right. He remains a widowed cipher, displaying his grief like a purple heart. The reader soon tires of him, and joins the other characters in wishing Michael would get a life--somewhere else. The narrative falters badly near the conclusion, as the action flashes backward, forward and sideways; Bram is obviously a capable writer, but he doesn’t seem to know what he wants to say about the phenomenon of AIDS “widowhood.”