ROUNDELAY

The rather incidental incidents in the lives of Dana Loring, husbandless, and her three children in gentle to benignly feminine terms. There's a recognizability in Dana, her New York environs, home and community activities, and the disorientation of her life as at 39 she watches her children grow up and away from her. Particularly Geoff, who gives up his approbrium of all women and gets girl-conscious, while Ted keeps his affection for Cecily (still in braces but the possessor of a fine arrow head collection) secret, and lastly while Sara graduates to her first evening dress- her first adult moments. But it is Geoff who brings home the final fact of lonelier years ahead for Dana as he leaves for the Army at eighteen... Pleasantly familiar faces, and a familiar maternal leitmotif in a handling which achieves sympathy without too much stress, and observes the nicoties of lightly-serious feminine fiction.