PECKED TO DEATH BY GOSLINGS

The author of Life With Mother Superior (1962) retains her flashy sense of humor even though her material isn't up to the earlier book. Now a career girl, she quickly caught the New Yorker habit of fleeing the city on summer weekends but after some disastrous idylls in the usual sun and fun spots she opted for her own place--it turned out to be a barn in Old Gosling, Connecticut, which she named Versailles because of the money poured into converting it. The Old Gosling cast of characters and caretakers included neighbor Orville with his Eskimo wife and their ten kids; a German handyman, also an amateur photographer whose ""nature studies"" consisted of nudes in her garden; socialites Lily and Pat who had ""converted an old stable into an old stable""; Clovis, a kooky English sheepdog and a varied assortment of guests and pests. It's the sort of situations first hatched in The Egg and I and Miss Trahey does it well