THE BEST IS YET TO BE

If there is any such thing as the male change of life novel, this is it. It features two attractive people somewhere well into middle age who have just seen their young son set out to make his own life with the girl of his choice. Freed of responsibilities and cares, they make off, a little lightheadedly, for Europe. Somehow they cannot leave an involvement with the young behind. On shipboard, there is eleven year old whiz kid Alfred Mandel who wants to be an adult and acts like one while skinning the old man at twenty-one. In Rome there is Electra Lawrence, a friend's child who is a painter practicing the art of playing one man against another (she comes to the hotel for a bath). In Florence there is lovely, vulnerable Meredith Burdette, who must be taught for her own good that the man who squires her in the Boboli Gardens is more cavalier elsewhere. And so it goes, until a long overdue letter from Cam tells the Wallaces that they are to be grandparents. They forsake the glories of Greece for this more private one and hurry home to find that they are not supernumerary after all. It is a relaxed exercise, a mild and pleasant pick-me up for persons of a certain age.