A MARRIAGE MADE AT WOODSTOCK, by Cathie Pelletier, Crown, 276 pages, $22.

Accountant Frederick Stone prides himself on being the earliest riser in his neighborhood. Frederick Stone grocery shops with an alphabetized list and knows exactly what Consumer Report has to say on every item. Frederick Stone does a daily inspection of his person and records each new gray hair and wrinkle in a computerized journal. Frederick Stone never runs yellow lights.

Frederick Stone is, in short, a tightly wrapped individual.

It is, therefore, a surprise to no one but Frederick when his wife of 24 years abruptly leaves him one hot, summer day. His wife’s name, Chandra (formerly Lorraine), means `changeable,” yet it seems Frederick is the one who’s changed the most since the two of them fell in love at Woodstock. Chandra is still a radical liberal, picketing and boycotting her way merrily through life. She protests veal production, burglarizes animal testing labs, and conducts pop psychology seminars in their living room. Frederick, once an English major with pretensions to poesy, has somehow become, in his own startled estimation, “the Establishment.”

In this, her fifth novel, Cathie Pelletier give us a happily married person’s ultimate nightmare — just when you think everything is going fine, your spouse cites irreconcilable differences and splits without offering you the opportunity to make things right.

“He looked there (in her eyes) for an answer since none was coming out of her mouth. Dark eyed, O woman of my dreams. He saw her pupils growing smaller with the light, shrinking, twenty years disappearing, all those Sunday mornings in bed evaporating. He saw himself growing old alone, a crusty, ancient man, bitter to the end, living on the outskirts of humanity … without even a laptop to keep him company.”

Like Stevens in Ishiguro’s “Remains of the Day,” Frederick re-examines his life and discovers, much to his own amazement, that perhaps many of his long-held assumptions have failed him. Such revelations do not come all at once, however. In the months that follow Chandra’s departure, we watch Frederick go through the stages of loss: denial, anger, desperation, The Big Drunk, and finally, revelation.

Pelletier is at her best here, mixing humor and pathos to evoke reader sympathy for a man who has — make no mistake — really screwed up. Hubris! Chandra repeatedly rails at him, complacency, inattention to life. Tossed up on the cold shores of loneliness, Frederick turns to assorted relatives and neighbors for help in redefining his sense of self.

Chief among his less-than-sympathetic advisers is older brother Herbert (a middle-aged divorcee, swinger and self-styled veterinarian to the poor) who, over a running gag series of duck dinners, tries to use his own experience to help Frederick make the transition to single life. His demonstration of Bly’s “Iron John” techniques in the foyer of a Chinese restaurant is one of Pelletier’s funniest scenes since “The Funeral Makers.”

” `Well?’ Frederick began, and was horrified to see … Herbert do a sudden pirouette in the middle of the foyer, then another, and another before he jumped, legs spread, arms outstretched, into Frederick’s face.

” `Eeeeeeeeeiiiiiiii!’ Herbert screamed. `Arrrrrrrgggggggg!’ The maitre d’ came running on soft little feet. … Now Herbert bounced from one foot to another, a Scottish highlands dance. His Van Gogh tie, an elongated version of `Starry Night,’ flew like a narrow Dutch flag. … Herbert waved the maitre d’ back into the restaurant with a reassuring gesture. He turned, smiling, to Frederick, a band of sweat shining on his forehead.

” `It’s the wild man in me,’ Herbert admitted, winded. His wild man was obviously out of shape.”

Yet, for all its humor, “A Marriage Made At Woodstock” is at heart a thoughtful and often profoundly sad book. Experiencing the collapse of Frederick’s world through his perceptions, it is impossible for the reader not to feel some degree of sympathy, even when you also want to whack him on the head and scream, “Wake up, fool!” Pelletier further enlists reader sympathy by not vilifying any particular character. Frederick is a flawed, Thurberesque Everyman — a cautionary figure against taking life for granted. And if Chandra remains a somewhat two-dimensional figure through much of the book, it is because we have her mostly through Frederick’s nostalgically suspect reminiscences — the woman he dreams of and the woman we encounter simply do not match. If they did, chances are Freddy would still be bringing Chandra his specially blended coffee in bed.

Lynn Flewelling is a free-lance writer who lives in Bangor.