Like its heroine, this novel is thoroughly likable. Also like its heroine, this novel can't quite decide what it wants to be. There are strains of the first novel as it used to be written, before the memoir took its place: A young stand-in for the writer comes of age while struggling to define herself as an artist (in this case a composer). There are elements of the contemporary dysfunctional family drama. There's the single girl, sex-in-the-city story, with satirical overtones and a hint of academic comedy.

The heroine is Rose. The city is Minneapolis in the '70s and '80s (you can almost see Rose throwing her hat into the air at the corner of 7th Street and Nicollet Mall). And the narrative -- when it's not taken up with Rose's antics, sexual exploits and romantic travails -- is driven by her attempts to complete a symphony.

So, appropriately enough, the movements of the book come together in symphonic fashion: exposition, elaboration, complication, reiteration and coda. Or, really, The Rose Variations.

In 1975, Rose MacGregor arrives at an unnamed college in Minneapolis to take up the chairman's teaching duties while he's on sabbatical. Her appointment introduces her to Frances, the music department's secretary, who plays a key role in the events that follow. Frances, who it turns out has had an affair with the married chairman (perhaps precipitating his leave), is an interesting but never really convincing character; what's least convincing about her is her hold on Rose, whose dependence on this clearly insecure and manipulative woman seems at odds with the idea we're supposed to be forming of our independent and spunky heroine.

But much of Marisha Chamberlain's story centers on the hardships and perils of independence -- for an academic, a composer, a single woman in Rose's time. In an almost picaresque mode, the book introduces us to one unlikely lover after another, from the not-quite-out gay colleague to the rough-hewn stonemason to the brilliant bearded female cellist to the substantial piano tuner and repairman. Throughout, Rose's quirkily dysfunctional family comes into play, whether by reference or direct intervention.

Each episode has its virtues and its charms. And each makes us wonder what Rose will do -- and whether she's serving the author's purpose or her own.

There comes a moment when the whole narrative is derailed, as are Rose and her current romance, by the question of whether she'll get tenure. It seems at this point that the book, which had deeper and broader interests, has stumbled over a need for closure in recognizable -- and not really significant -- terms.

And yet, as we question the author's subjection of Rose to one dubious lover or another, or one questionable plot point or another, we are acknowledging Chamberlain's creation of a character real, rich, and sympathetic enough to merit our interest and, even, to earn our advocacy. And that is a success on a scale that any musical, or literary, prodigy might hope for.

Ellen Akins is a novelist in Cornucopia, Wis. She teaches in the MFA program at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey.