The Stirring Pot

By Martha Duffy

THE GOVERNOR by Edward R.F. Sheehan. 313 pages. World. $6.95.

The term "regional novel" usually applies to cameos of life from the North Woods or the Spoon River basin, but it should probably be expanded to take in Boston and the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. There are more ethnic novels around these days--with the Jews, the Irish and the Italians fighting it out for the Nostalgia Cup as they once vied for control of city councils. The Governor, the latest Irish entry, is a genial updating of the late Edwin O'Connor's Boston. All it lacks is O'Connor's stereopticon skill at making two-dimensional characters seem solid.

Governor Emmett Shannon is a mick manque who goes to Mass only when the press is present. His battle with a contracting czar over the grafting of parking facilities onto Boston's tiny, jewel-like Public Gardens is neither as funny nor as deadly as it should be. Still, Edward Sheehan is expert at mapping the social-climbing customs of the local clans. Irish civic life--with its blend of the sacred and profane, its flouting of the separation between church and state --is the author's real subject. The Emmett Shannons of the world still have their Sister Philomenas teaching arithmetic: "Emmett, how much is four prophecies plus eight prophecies divided by three prophecies?" The religious oddments that Sheehan calls "the pornography of piety" still litter their homes.

There are new frills, to be sure. The whisky priests now come to bless Buicks in return for booze, and the downtown businessman's chapel has a huge garage underneath. But as the author well knows, the pot has not quite melted yet and the smart satirist keeps going back for nuggets.

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