Teenage sex, estranged siblings, a Low Country tale

Whores on the Hill
By Colleen Curran
Vintage, 224 pp., paperback, $12.95

The Alphabet Sisters
By Monica McInerney
Ballantine, 432 pp., paperback, $13.95

Pawleys Island
By Dorothea Benton Frank
Berkley, 336 pp., $24.95

As these three quite different novels illustrate, it's impossible to generalize about popular fiction because the field encompasses so many genres and styles. However, one platitude still applies: Don't judge a book by its cover. Or by its title, for that matter.

Colleen Curran's remarkable first novel ''Whores on the Hill" is a good example of why that old saw holds true. The title and the cover may lead potential readers to imagine that it is something quite different than what it is, i.e., an honest, poignant, beautifully written story about teenage sex, from a young woman's point of view.

Tisbe, a 15-year-old Milwaukee schoolgirl known to her two best friends as Jellybean, is the narrator. After she is humiliated and tormented at her old school, where ''football was God," her mother transfers her to Sacred Heart, where she meets Astrid and Juli. The three form an immediate bond, ''a kind of family." Their parents are preoccupied with work and their own failing relationships and don't have much time for their daughters.

The three girls hike up their plaid uniform skirts way beyond the stipulated 3 inches above the knee. They have their own dress code: uniform punk. They wear ripped fishnet stockings, black combat boots, torn oxford cloth shirts and yards of scapulas, rosaries and medals around their necks. It's the 1980s. Life is fresh, exciting, dangerous. They chase boys and experiment with drugs, drink, birth control, lesbianism. ''Everybody called us 'The Whores on the Hill,' Astrid, Juli and me, but that didn't stop us," says Jellybean, defiantly. They adopt the name and make it their own to spite the double standard.

''We were the girls who thought we were nothing if not this: a force, a flame, a million nerve ends electric with appetite and not afraid," boasts Jellybean. But there's a lot to fear. Astrid is the victim of rape. Juli slices her arms and spends time in a mental hospital. They experience sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancy. They push the boundaries.

The book is raw and explicit, but it has a kind of sweetness, too, as the girls, innocent in so many ways, struggle toward adulthood. Curran's writing is fresh and authentic, with a singular rhythm that perfectly suits her subject.

''The Alphabet Sisters" has the warning signs of melodrama, but Monica McInerney is a talented writer whose vivid characterizations and sharply honed dialogue raise this well-constructed family story well above the level of cliché. McInerney brings humor and insight to issues of sibling rivalry, family secrecy, and romantic betrayal.

As children, Anna, Bett, and Carrie Quinlan were a singing trio known throughout South Australia as the Alphabet Sisters. Now they're adults, and estranged. They haven't spoken in three years, since Carrie and Matthew, Bett's fiancé, broke the news that they'd fallen in love and planned to marry.

Bett moved to London where she works in the press office of a record company writing promotional releases. (''They're young, they're angry, and they're here. London's newest music sensation, Dogs From Hell. . .") She's beginning to think that her job, once exciting, is as empty and meaningless as her love life. Anna, a voice-over artist in Sydney, creates voices for commercial products, e.g. a kitchen sponge. (''Let me at it! I'm the clean machine!") Anna's husband Glenn is having an affair. Their 7-year-old daughter Ellen is recovering from a vicious mauling by a Rottweiler.

Carrie married Matthew and stayed at home to manage the family motel. But now the marriage is in trouble.

Lola, the sisters' eccentric, energetic Irish grandmother, calls Ann and Bett home for her 80th birthday. Lola reared the three girls while their parents worked. She loves her ''brat-faced princesses" dearly and longs for them to reconcile, to be as close as they were all those years ago, when she transformed them into the Alphabet Sisters. She has a plan. Lola announces to the 70-odd guests at her party that she has written a musical comedy about General Douglas MacArthur, ''Many Happy Returns," and the Alphabet Sisters have agreed to star in a performance to benefit the local ambulance fund. It's the first the sisters have heard of Lola's musical, but eventually they agree to take part. As they work together they begin to understand, forgive and recapture their old intimacy.

You always know where you are with Dorothea Benton Frank: South Carolina's Low Country. ''Pawleys Island" (Berkley, 320 pp., $24.95) is the fifth of Frank's Low Country tales. It's set on the tiny barrier island of the title, a favorite of Carolina natives since colonial times. Frank is a Low Country native who knows her territory. ''Pawleys Island" is imbued with a vivid sense of place that is so appealing that readers may want to pack up the book and head to the Carolina coast.

Retired attorney Abigail Thurmond is coping with the deaths of her husband and son by moving to the old family place on the island where, on her therapist's advice, she is thinking about writing her memoirs. Real life intervenes when a talented artist, Rebecca Sims, presents her portfolio to Huey Valentine, proprietor of Gallery Valentine and Abigail's best friend. Rebecca reveals that her abusive ex-husband has had her declared an unfit mother and now has custody of their two children. Huey's 86-year-old mother Olivia, outraged at this injustice, insists that something be done. Abigail, whose specialty is family law, agrees to represent Rebecca.

''Pawley's Island" is a leisurely novel peopled by likeable characters, as well as one over-the-top villain. It's perfect beach reading. And if you don't have a beach, Frank provides one.

Diane White writes each month about new light and popular fiction.