MANHATTAN TRANSPLANT

This is in contrast to other, numerous reports of former city dwellers coping with life in suburbia, exurbia, small towns and farms for it chronicles a reverse migration. A year's sabbatical spent in New York is the subject and the author, her husband (business manager of Antioch College) and two daughters (aged nine and eleven) leave their small Ohio town for a season of change. Here are all the problems, adjustments and compensations in detail -- renting their house and finding a suitable apartment, settling the girls in their new school, trying to buy their clothes at department stores, dealing with neighborhood shopkeepers -- and out of town visitors, the constant battle of ""P.T."" (public transportation) vs. ""p.t."" private transportation), and the social life -- theaters, restaurants, the sights of the city. There's a deft, light touch here which is reminiscent of, but not equal to, Betty MacDonald and Jean Kerr, and which could in its new look at a big city cause a response in past and present New Yorkers.