Reservation Road

In the book world, a prepublication buzz usually means somebody got lucky and landed a killer advance, or else there's another reputation-razing biography in the works. Once in a while, though, it actually signals the arrival of something special — such as the emphatically positive word of mouth that heralded the release of this summer's Reservation Road. Question is, can a taut psychological drama about ordinary people — no superlawyers, no fighter pilots, no vampires, no terrorists — compete in a blockbuster marketplace? Time will tell, but for now it's enormously heartening to see John Burnham Schwartz's indelible second novel launched with proper fanfare and a respectable first printing of 45,000 copies.

After an outdoor concert on a warm summer night, the Learner family of suburban Wyndham Falls, Conn., is driving home. But two apparently insignificant decisions — to take a shortcut, to stop at a service station — lead to staggering, permanent anguish. While Grace Learner accompanies her daughter, Emma, to the rest room, Ethan Learner steps inside the garage to purchase windshield-wiper fluid. Ten-year-old Josh stays behind, standing idly by the edge of Reservation Road. Suddenly, a midnight blue Ford Taurus blasts recklessly around a sharp curve and plows into the boy, killing him instantly. The car — driven by Dwight Arno, a local lawyer, whose own 10-year-old son is asleep beside him in the front seat — speeds on.

This is obviously not the first contemporary novel to deal with how an average family copes, or doesn't cope, with unimaginable catastrophe (Rosellen Brown's Before and After and Judith Guest's Ordinary People come to mind). What distinguishes Reservation Road, however, is Schwartz's uncanny, and unflinching, precision of insight, his genius for not just describing but evoking the hollowness of despair, its isolating corrosiveness, and often startling aggression. ''Without hope,'' says Ethan, a bookish college professor now thirsting for vengeance, ''the need to punish is the one true religion. Blame must be fixed on some soul other than one's own.''

Yet, for all of its careful, haunting characterization — Ethan's self-annihilating rage, Grace's eerie withdrawal from private and professional life (she's a garden designer), and 8-year-old Emma's engulfing confusion — the novel is never insular, or self-consciously literary. It has, in fact, all the relentless energy and crafty plotting of a first-rate thriller.