Short Takes

The Last of Her Kind
By Sigrid Nunez
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 375 pp., $25

This is a brilliant, dazzling, daring novel. Nunez has taken the old American Dream and stood it on its head. At the heart of this novel is Ann, the daughter of white wealth and privilege who idealistically turns her back on her heritage and remakes herself completely, identifying with the poor, the black, the disenfranchised. She becomes a revolutionary, a martyr, and a saint. Her story is told by Georgette (''George"), her Barnard College roommate, who comes at the American Dream from the usual direction: the grim lower middle class.

While George advances gradually toward her goal -- a job at a glitzy magazine, an apartment in the city -- Ann disappears, then surfaces dramatically, accused of killing a policeman and wounding a second one. Stubbornly remorseless, she refuses to make herself sympathetic to judge or jury and, convicted, spends the rest of her life in jail.

Through George, Nunez makes the literary connections that give the story heft and heart. ''The Last of Her Kind" refers to George Eliot's St. Teresa, Dorothea's model of sacrifice in ''Middlemarch": ''That Spanish woman who lived three hundred years ago, was certainly not the last of her kind," in Eliot's words. But the keenest comparison is to ''The Great Gatsby," American idealism wedded to materialism. This novel will make you rethink ''Gatsby" and its reputation as the great masterpiece of American literature -- no small feat.

The Big Why
By Michael Winter
Bloomsbury, 376 pp., $24.95

After having lived in New York City and the Monhegan artist colony, Rockwell Kent decided to take himself, his young wife, and his three children to Brigus, Newfoundland. He was just 30 years old; the year was 1914. There, in brutal, primitive conditions, he tested his own flinty, prickly, proud character against the stubborn natives. According to Michael Winter's even-handed and thoughtful account, it was a fair fight.

Kent, wishing to work in tranquil isolation, found himself up against a damp, cold climate and a distant, closed culture. The warmth of family life failed to protect him from dreams of his former mistresses and the seduction of a local girl. There was some distraction in stories of shipwrecks, storms, murders, and betrayals, but he made little connection between his physical and cultural surroundings and his art. His neighbors were equally critical of him, wary of him for being learned, artsy, and wealthy. As the war with Germany progressed, they suspected him of being a German spy because he admired German culture and played Schumann's ''Traumerei." Eventually, they expelled him, sending him back to New York, where he judged the experiment a failure of false desire.

What Would Jackie Do?: An Inspired Guide to Distinctive Living
By Shelly Branch and Sue Callaway
Gotham, 290 pp., $22.50

Despite the catchy title, this book is no joke. It is a serious self-help book delivered without wit or irony. Jackie's experience and advice are dispensed as essential information for the modern woman. Except for insisting that thank-you notes for a dinner party or country weekend be written by hand and sent within 24 hours of the event, there is little advice here that I can imagine anyone making use of.

There is much that is historically accurate and well researched. Jackie, for a special gala for the president of Pakistan, threw a party on the lawn of Mount Vernon, transporting 132 guests by boat along the Potomac. Jackie required fresh sheets each morning, favoring pale pink silk. Jackie believed less is more, wearing only one spectacular piece of jewelry at a time. When her sister, Lee, wished to borrow Jackie's new jewels, gifts from Ari Onassis, Jackie pretended not to hear her. Lee is often the victim of Jackie's sensible and often selfish rules of etiquette. Lee is not only denied Jackie's jewels, she is politely discouraged from pursuing her acting career (Jackie took herself out of the country when Lee was onstage) and, finally, disinherited in Jackie's will. Apparently what Jackie would do is keep sibling rivalry alive even after death.

Barbara Fisher is a freelance critic who lives in New York.