Once-rotten sibling eulogizes his sister

A Brother, a Sister - a True Story of Two Turbulent Lives

By Steve Geng

Holt. 292 pp. $24.

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Reviewed by John Freeman

Siblings may emerge into the world with equal talent, but it is their respective natures - among many other factors - that determine whether they'll have a kind or cruel ride. Such was the case of Steve and Veronica Geng, siblings with literary gifts born into the same family who took radically divergent paths.

Veronica became a respected writer and editor at the New Yorker, known for shepherding the manuscripts of Philip Roth and for dispatching others with a rapier wit. Steve lived a bohemian life and nearly drank and drugged himself to death.

Now, 10 years after Veronica's death from brain cancer, Steve Geng delivers Thick as Thieves, a heartbreaking memoir that struts and snorts with a macho swagger reminiscent of Henry Miller's scabrous novels. Deep down, though, it is a love letter to his lost sister.

Veronica was the satellite around which Steve oriented himself. The opening pages of Thick as Thieves recall how they wrestled their way through childhood, battling their father's tumultuous moods and sudden cruelties.

Ronnie, as Steve calls her, learned to retreat and then to stand her ground. Geng recalls an incident when their father invited them to order whatever they wanted at a diner, and then said, "That's terrific. But what are you kids going to use for money?" Ronnie shoots back, "I'll just have a glass of water and a toothpick, thank you, please."

Steve, on the other hand, responds to such treatment by goofing off - and worse. He begins stealing things, and then goes on an arson jag. When the family moves to France for three years, he becomes an expert at black- market shenanigans, trading gas vouchers for drugs or cash, which he throws at hookers in Paris.

"I found Monique with her bleached-blond hair and pink orlon sweater leaning against the jukebox," he writes of one encounter, "chewing bubble-gum and miming the words to 'Hit the Road Jack.' "

Like many would-be American writers who went to Paris in the 1950s, Geng becomes a hipster and bebop junkie, and it shows in his writing. His prose has a scatlike rhythm and an itchy-eyeballed attention span. It skitters across the surface of his memories until it hits upon Ronnie, who is a deep well of melancholy.

As much as Geng romances his days of louche living, it's clear he regrets the time he wasted that he could have spent with her. While he was dropping sugarcubes of LSD, she was writing her way into the New Yorker. While he was passing out drunk on the floor of her West Village apartment, she was up reading manuscripts and making better writers out of some of the best novelists in the country.

"Is it true, Veronica," he recalls hearing people ask her one night while he was half-asleep on the floor, "that your brother is a habitual criminal who's wanted in half a dozen states?" To which she replied: "Please, I have no idea what my brother is up to."

Ronnie clearly had a different class of friends, and if there's anything that is regrettable about Thick as Thieves, it's the boldface style with which it drops many of these names, from editors to novelists.

The truth of the matter was, Steve Geng had gotten in over his head. He would go home with men to case their apartment, steal their watches. He got good at boosting just about anything. He got caught and bounced in and out of jail.

Finally, he hit bottom and got clean, but not before he became infected with HIV.

The narrative of addiction and recovery has become so familiar in this country, it takes a terrific writer to make it interesting anymore. Geng runs through these tales with a confessional instinct, but he never wallows in pity.

Instead, Thick as Thieves romantically memorializes a relationship that could have saved him from himself - but didn't. It's a wonder Geng pulled through - and a victory for readers.