This very ingratiating first novel parses a love affair without any sentimental sanctification from subject to predicate, and from direct object to more and more indirect -- the insecure young woman on the receiving end of really nothing. Hilary records this revived romance with Al who had left her seven years ago when she was eighteen; now he's thirty-five, a successful banker, and an ""ideal hit-and-run"" lover in a relationship which never expands or submits to any explanations, taking her through all the phases of disbelief, false hope, anger, grief, and right down to the terminus which was obvious from the beginning. Miss Pease writes in a youthful, intimate, anticipatory and casually stylish fashion and it is very close to the Real Life of what an affair is or just was.