MONKEY ISLAND by Paula Fox (Orchard...

MONKEY ISLAND by Paula Fox (Orchard Books: $14.95; 160 pp.). Social problems are not always the stuff of successful fiction. Too often theme turns into too-strident thesis, and art becomes agitprop. But then there are authors like Paula Fox who can pluck an issue like the plight of the urban homeless from the headlines and--through sheer, consummate artistry--reveal the uniquely human and suffering individual faces behind those headlines. Her protagonist is 11-year-old Clay; two homeless adults, Calvin and Buddy, become his surrogate family in Monkey Island, the city park where the homeless seek the threadbare sanctuary of a home that consists of park benches, bushes and cardboard boxes. Fox not only creates fully realized characters and the full physical and emotional environment in which they exist, she is an equally brilliant stylist who enriches her prose with metaphor and simile without ever once sounding self-importantly “artistic.” “Monkey Island” has the power and simplicity of truth and the universality of fable.