Day in life drags on like book

DINOSAURS ON THE ROOF. By David Rabe. Simon & Schuster. 484 pages. $26.

"Too long" may sound like an unsophisticated critique to level at a novel. But David Rabe's "Dinosaurs on the Roof" should have undergone some ruthless editing.

The story line follows a day in the lives of two women in the small Iowa town of Belger. Bernice Doorley is an older woman awaiting the biblical rapture, a prophesy from her charismatic preacher. Her only concern is that after she is lifted to heaven, who will look after her three dogs and two cats?

Rather than looking to her own daughter, she asks Janet Cawley, the daughter of her deceased friend, to step in. But Cawley isn't doing so good looking after her own life. The recently divorced, out-of-work elementary school teacher is having an affair with a married former colleague and drinking impressive amounts of bourbon. As she spins into a suicidal haze, her orbit crosses Big Baby Dog, her supplier of downers, and a former student, whom she attempts to seduce.

All the while, she must get around to those infernal dogs. The premise is amusing, and the narrative starts strongly. Each woman thinks the other is crazy, yet they become strangely beholden to each other. Both characters are well-developed and complex, but the day drags on. Rabe marches readers out the front door, down the sidewalk and into the car. That much attention to characters' comings and goings is tiresome.

Sucking some of the air out of this novel also would have bolstered the themes of death and escape. Rabe, author of "Hurlyburly" and "In the Boom Boom Room," is better known as a playwright. The pithy dialogue in "Dinosaurs on the Roof" may fare better on stage than on the page, where the banter grows wearying: "This is fine." "Really?" "Yes." "Okay if you say so." "I do. It's fine."