On The Run

By LANCE MORROW

Evil is a large word. There should be a smaller term to describe the form of malevolence that sits at the kitchen table and indulges itself in the familiar dialectic: indignantly self-pitying sulk...lashing violence...remorse in the morning. Repeat.

In Anna Quindlen's third novel, Black and Blue (Random House; 293 pages; $23), the former New York Times columnist has caught the evil essence. If its moment should prove to be right (a long shot, to be sure), the novel is good enough to become to domestic violence what Uncle Tom's Cabin was to slavery--a morally crystallizing act of propaganda that works because it has the ring of truth.

Fran Benedetto, a nurse married to a New York City policeman named Bobby Benedetto, is finally running away. Helped along by an underground railway for victims of domestic abuse, Fran, after years of beatings and broken bones at Bobby's hands, is vanishing with their 10-year-old son Robert. The oldest American story: escape to reinvent the self. Fran changes her name to Beth Crenshaw and ends up in a dreary garden apartment in inland Florida, an hour from the ocean. She and Robert, afoot beside the Florida highway, have their Thanksgiving dinner at the Chirping Chicken and try to come to terms with their memories of the good Bobby and the bad Bobby--knowing all the while that the relentless Bobby is out there and after them: a heartbreaking game of hide-and-seek. Quindlen understands the dilemmas of these lives, never exaggerates, and captures the evil perfectly because (if this makes sense) she never demonizes it.

--By Lance Morrow