Brotherhood and Aunt Sal

MAKE THE LOVE TREE GROW by Martin O'Neill. 241 pages. Crown. $5.95.

Black-white confrontations can do something for novels as well as for races, as this variation on the theme of open housing shows. Into the sanitized, suburban home of Bill Doyle is thrust young Chris Dawson, 14--the same age as Doyle's own son Dennis--to spend the summer. A neighbor says plaintively, "A Negro boy here--in Harrington Estates? You know damn well nobody will admit we're antiSemitic, but we don't even allow Jews."

Lucky Jews. Harrington Estates contains some tested suburban cliches, from the racist neighbor to the crotchety oldsters, from the sex-starved housewife to the nubile nymph. To Doyle, all of them are necessary to test his pet theory: that people on the same economic and intellectual level can get along fine no matter what color they are.

The experiment is less than universally successful, but the boys respond well. Black Chris is bright and sexually precocious enough to seduce a neighbor; white Dennis is in the adolescent agonies of beginning sexuality. They compete, exchange random bits of knowledge and finally achieve a guarded friendship. Author O'Neill's best-drawn character is Chris' earthy Aunt Sal, who has spent a lifetime dispensing sex education. Having tutored Chris long before, she generously introduces Dennis to her favors. Aunt Sal clearly has a pet theory about brotherhood too, and it is simpler than Doyle's.

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