Louise Wareham: Since you ask

The question implicit in this title might be: are you the type of person to cause things to happen or do things happen to you? Whose responsibility are you; are you your own keeper? Are you your brother's keeper? Does the answer to that last question change if he coerced you into an incestuous relationship when you were 9 and he was 14?

Betsy, a 20-something wealthy New Yorker, gives confused answers to these conundrums by relating her journey from abused child to psychiatric patient. While the 'poor little rich girl' set-up is not original, the writing is subtle and the timeline's as mixed-up as Betsy. She has slept and cheated with a lot of unsuitable men along the way -a drug dealer, a married friend of her parents -been washed around rather than taking control, been picked up and thrown back by her bedfellows like a rag doll. She isn't attracted to nice men.

She has taken a lot of drugs. Self-loathing is a way of life. Her parents don't seem that interested in what she does (or in what's happening to her). Her brother, well, he's the cause of her passive, vulnerable floundering, isn't he? Betsy's not so sure about that; she feels guilty about the incest even though she's found it hard to take responsibility for anything since then. As a teenager, lying on her middle-aged lover's bed she says: 'I got tears in my eyes, not from sadness but from frustration, the way I wanted so much to leave, kept urging myself to leave, but just didn't do it, just didn't, ever, do it.' Her life is just one big cry for help.

Make it a quiet request for help -Betsy is not one for melodrama. She'd probably be friends with Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield if she knew him. Her matter-of-fact voice makes this debut novel a lighter read than the subject matter might indicate, and it clips along at a fair pace. The reader is invited to make a psychological analysis of Betsy's character -can she be she a trustworthy narrator?

In the end, the most important question is not how the past happened, but if Betsy can deal with it. Wareham is one of the graduates of Bill Manhire's high-profile creative writing course at Victoria University and although it peters out slightly towards the end, this is a more-than-respectable first novel.

* Janet McAllister is a canvas writer.

* Akashic Books, $32.95