Short takes
Ditched by Dr. Right: And Other Distress Signals From the Edge of Polite Society
By Elizabeth Warner
Villard, 256 pp., paperback, $12.95
Elizabeth Warner has performed many of these pieces as stand-up routines, and they have the pace, rhythm, and smart, sassy humor of the comedy club. Such routines, she warns, are not ''poignant painful journeys of discovery, rather they are eighty-five-minute whiny me-fests." Hers are neither: They are hilarious explorations of growing up in her hometown, WASP Philadelphia, ''a gutless mix of adultery and tonic."
Raised on Philadelphia's Main Line, Elizabeth is a sharp observer of her kind. She is especially sensitive to her mother, who, ''reeking of Protestant purpose, general disapproval, and Chanel No. 19," offers opinions on her daughter's wrong-headed choices in work and love. Elizabeth herself is not too certain about her career as an inspired writer of junk mail for Time Inc. and a masochistically dismissive judge of men. While working for Time and attempting to become an actress, Elizabeth takes on a few other gigs. Wearing a latex mask, she plays a witch at Madison ''Scare" Garden's Halloween party, comforting the children who are scared and scaring the children who are comfortable. She is surprisingly good at all her jobs.
The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa
By Michael Kimmelman
Penguin, 256 pp., $24.95
The grab-bag title of this collection indicates appropriately that what follows is more random than designed. Kimmelman includes here essays whose topics range from Pierre Bonnard's lonely life with his reclusive, fragile, and suspicious wife and model, Marthe, to the history of the Museum of Incandescent Lighting, founded by eccentric Baltimore dentist Hugh Francis Hicks.
Between these highs and lows, Kimmelman writes engagingly on Marcel Duchamp, whose signed and displayed urinals ''replaced the art of discrimination with art by designation." In ''The Art of Pilgrimage," Kimmelman describes traveling to view Matthias Grunewald's 16th-century Isenheim altarpiece in eastern France. Then he compares that spiritual event with the emotional attentiveness required by huge ''earth art" installations, like Nancy Holt's ''Sun Tunnels" in Utah. The most moving essay, ''The Art of Finding Yourself When You're Lost," chronicles a punishing expedition to Antarctica in 1911 undertaken by a brave and impractical group of British explorers and captured eerily on film by Frank Hurley.
While the essays appear almost accidental, the art, masterpieces or not, seems hardly the creation of chance.
Pomegranate Soup
By Marsha Mehran
Random House, 222 pp., $23.95
The plot of this predictable novel moves inexorably toward triumph. Obstacles are set only to be neatly overcome. But the obstacles arise from an unusual clash of cultures. The heroines, three sisters, are young women from Iran who must first surmount the real difficulties of leaving their home as the Islamic revolution of 1979 erupts around them. After fleeing from torture, imprisonment, and violence through Pakistan to London, they finally settle in the Irish seaside town of Ballinacroagh.
With little difficulty the three beautiful, exotic, and mysterious sisters find a central location, purchase foreign supplies, and open a Persian restaurant, the Babylon Cafe. The locals, more curious than competitive, are attracted to the ambrosial smells that waft around the cafe and the girls. The restaurant is an immediate success, serving dishes fragrant with cardamom and rosewater to folks used to the swill of the public house. The town bully tries to cause some trouble. The youngest sister, only 15, falls in love; the middle sister fears reprisals from her abusive and vindictive husband left in Iran. But it is clear that their lives will rise, like lavash bread, once they find a warm, comforting environment. Recipes for the bread as well as for dolmeh, pomegranate soup, and lavender-mint tea are included.
Barbara Fisher is a freelance critic who lives in New York. 
