THE FALCONER

A married woman finds the passion she's never known before in the arms of a long, lean, rugged man, and then they must say good- bye—sound familiar? McCarthy's first novel isn't a simple Bridges of Madison Country knockoff, however. She's added her own heartwrencher to the mix: Her heroine has only six months to live. India Blake (40ish) has spent a lifetime just enduring. For years she devoted herself to caring for her alcoholic mother. Next, she married cold-hearted, faithless Dougie. Now, learning that she has inoperable cancer, India decides to fill her life with all the things she's never done. She starts by making a list, and, to her own surprise, the top item is ``fly a falcon.'' After some searching, this wish leads her to Rhodri (pronounced ``Rory'') MacNeal, a 44-year-old Scottish-Canadian pilot who lives in the hills outside of her small California town. Rhodri, with ``his keen, gold-brown eyes and his narrow high-bridged nose,'' raises and trains falcons. India begins spending time in the hills with Rhodri and, before too long, they give in to a mutual desire. Meanwhile, McCarthy's straightforward prose style is easier to take than Waller's, and she even has India cast an ironic eye on her own plotline: ``Wasn't it the stuff of legend, of song and story? Discontented wife finds solace and fulfillment with handsome stranger?'' But even aware of the clichÇs in her own story, McCarthy doesn't manage to avoid them—there's a predictability here that blunts any emotional edge. And the characters never come to life. By the end, all that was inevitable has inevitably happened, along with one final twist to the lovers' tale, finishing things up in (literally) a golden glow uncomfortably like a greeting-card sunset. It's oddly unmoving, though. Madison County fans won't even need their hankies here. Some nice moments with falcons but altogether too formulaic to fly.