ELEVENTH SUMMER <i> by Carlo Gebler (Fireside: $7.95)</i>

The homey odors of the Irish countryside permeate Carlo Geb-ler’s coming-of-age story. After his mother’s death, 10-year-old Paul Weissmann is sent from his father’s home in London to his grandparents’ farm. His gentle grandmother channels all her pent-up affection into her love for him; his grandfather is a hard man who treats Paul only slightly less harshly than he does his wife. But the grandfather’s drunken binges teach Paul things he otherwise never would have learned, opening his eyes to the darker realities of life: to cheating, degradation, the dark power of alcoholism and, ultimately, death, when the old man’s neglected cigarette burns down the family farmhouse. Gebler evokes the lilt of Irish speech without stooping to the cliches of writing in dialect.