I WAS A CAREER GIRL'S CONSORT

Told on a note of determined gaiety this is a harassed husband's account of his wife's perpetual forays into the realms of enterprise -- excursions which seem designed to produce more hysteria than hilarity. But fortunately Bart McDowell's attitude is, in general, good-natured. It began when Martha took a part-time job to get away from their three energetic children. Thereafter their problems evolved around the financial: the necessity of maintaining full-time maids -- who came in processions and couldn't seem to cope with the McDowell's odd schedules; Martha's subsequent job-hopping which kept a stream of Characters floating through their house; her entanglement in an international proxy wedding; and a multitude of household incidents -- children's sickness, redecorating, etc., etc. which, in the McDowell's case, assumed the proportions of chaos. When, finally Martha agrees to ""settle down"" Bart learns that it is only to hatch her latest project -- a new kind of home cannery. The publishers call this a ""Shaggy Family Story"". Some may find encouragement in its emotionally tatterdemalion qualities.