STELLA LANDRY

STELLA LANDRY Robin McCorquodale (Morrow, $20) Foundling, foster child, and sexually molested teenager, the eponymous heroine of Robin McCorquodale's second novel is a seasoned call girl by age 16. Though she tries to go straight, settling into a comfortable marriage to a small-town garage mechanic, Stella's past is eventually brought to light, causing her to abandon home, husband, and 3-year-old son (it's the Eisenhower years) and to wander, sorrowful and hardened, back and forth across Texas. You keep expecting McCorquodale to do something original-or at least ironic-with the sudsy formula, but she never does. For all of her good writing, her story, right down to its redemptive last sentence, is doggedly predictable. C -Tom De Haven