MAIDEN

Maiden does not mean single"" and still intacta in her lavender peignoir is Fortunee (nee Fortune) Dundy who joins a singles or ""swingles"" residence, Villa Dionysus, in the hopes of losing what she's retained too long. As uncomfortable as a skinpeel, her story takes her through immolating humiliations from the time when she's first pulled in the swimming pool leaving a wake of Kleenex from her stuffed swimsuit to trail across the water. Writing letters to a lovelorn column, peddling cosmetics, but above all pursuing an uninterested dentist with more ""stamina and imagination"" than success, Fortunee is just another bachelor girl en route to spinsterdom ""quivering like a tuning fork"" in her heated dreams of submission rather than conquest. Regardless of its application (this is a book far easier to admire than enjoy), do not underestimate the sharpness of Miss Buchanan's talent. She works within a limited range but manages to convey the Dynel reality of this scene and convert it into something stronger a sad and savage experience which is much too true to be funny which it also, wincingly, is.