MAY IN MANHATTAN

This is a sequel to The Love Riddle (1962) which was, as this is, a sort of shopgirl's delight, trimmed with bath salts, lavender lingerie, white ermine stoles,-- a supreme example of sentimental incontinence. When we left Catherine who had lost her third husband, Ronald, to her daughter, Cynthia (Cynthia did not know Catherine was her mother), it was because Catherine wanted to legitimize Cynthia's child- via Ronald. To go on, if only to show that we did, Catherine is now very triste in her room on the Riviera; the young couple, and the little one, are in New York where Cynthia rightly suspects that Ronald had loved Catherine better. Other unfortunates from the earlier book are revived and killed off: Cynthia's father and her stepmother, his second unfaithful wife. The book closes with a mother and aughter recognition-reconciliation scene and Catherine now realizes that a child's -cream-smudged-kiss is worth more than a ""lead review in the Times"". Which Times?