FAMILY REUNION AND OTHER STORIES.

Bob Otis, an unmarketable author who is just starting his own publishing company in order to get his latest novels in print, is abruptly sidetracked when a relative, so distant that Otis doesn't even place him, phones from Chicago with a request: his father, who has just died, wishes to be buried in the family plot in a small town in Georgia.
This call leads to another wonderful comedy of manners as Otis, whose Southern sense of Obligations won't permit him to totally avoid this undertaking, is reluctantly sucked into a family reunion at the burial site: a burial attended by a cast of wonderfully eccentric characters who also have no knowledge of the deceased.
This novella is a direct descendant of Fleming's earlier comic novels: Colonel Effingham's Raid, Lucinderella, and Captain Bennett's Folly. Indeed, many of the zany, colorful, and irreverent characters of Lucinderella and Captain Bennett make their reappearances here, as does his fictional town of Fredericksville.
In many ways, this novel is reminiscent of Federico Fellini's film classic 8½, where the Italian director is surrounded by the characters in his life and in his films. So too does Fleming (who was also forced to self-publish his books during his decades of anonymity), bring to life his roots and his creations with a fine mixture of satire, reflection, and nostalgia.
In addition to Family Reunion are some fine examples of the author's gift for short fiction: pieces that touch the heart, the funny-bone, and the imagination.

The lead novella in this final and posthumous book is, aptly enough, a comic intrigue concerning a burial that manages, on the way to the family plot, to skewer a lot of southern and northern pretensions in vintage Fleming style (Captain Bennett's Folly, etc.). The narrator here, self-important womanizer Bob Otis, is busy bringing out his novel via a vanity press when a long-lost cousin from the North (``Up There'') calls, wanting to bring ``Dad'' home for burial in the family plot. Otis's wife has left, ``walking out with our five-year-old (who was becoming more real every minute like a negative in the developer).'' Even local members of the family-to-be-reunited can't remember each other's names, and things get further complicated when a black couple from the British West Indies with a similar name, having seen a Broadway play about the family homestead (by Lucinda Fannin of Lucinderella, 1988), arrive to avail themselves of the facilities. The comedy rolls along effortlessly, then comes up against a rather abrupt end, giving it an unfinished quality. Four short stories unevenly pad the collection: ``Afternoon in the Country'' and ``Happy New Year, Mr. Ganaway'' involve supernatural visitations or premonitions (the former, with overtones of ``The Open Window,'' is the more successful); ``War Memorial'' reflects on Nazism and the South in a hospital venue, while ``Beach Party,'' with an abandoned hostess in a leg brace, reads like an unintentional parody of Flannery O'Connor. A graceful writer with a good ear, Fleming is at his best with the wild yet fundamentally gentle satire on familiar turf that he brings off in ``Family Reunion''; the stories seem, by comparison, a writer's exercises and a publisher's afterthoughts. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The title novella, written in 1984 when the late Fleming was 85, displays his usual affectionate twitting of Southern mores. Narrator Bob Otis, owner of a small press that publishes only his novels, tells of making hasty funeral arrangements for a member of the "centrifugal family" of Telfair (also Taillefer, Taliaferro and Tolliver). Too polite to tell the deceased's son that he's never heard of that branch of the family, Otis, who's also trying to get his new book printed and, in late middle age, may be trying to bed young printing rep Becky, enlists matriarchal Cousin Doshia. Telfair clan leader Uncle Brownell must step lively to stop the burial of a black West Indian Tolliver in the family plot and arranges air passage for the corpse. Fleming's elliptical writing is as stylish, charming and sharp as ever, and some familiar characters appear, notably old Uncle Nolan ( Captain Bennett's Folly ) who has dream arguments with "the Voice," who offers him another 500 years. "Afternoon in the Country," spare cousin to "Turn of the Screw," is the best story; "War Memorial" and "Beach Party" are competent sketches and "Happy New Year, Mr. Ganaway" is bargaining-with-death slapstick with a little bite.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.