THE 42ND YEAR OF MRS. CHARLES PRESCOTT

In an uninterruptible first person, skittishly appealing if sometimes parlously so -- the coming of middle age to very middle American Helen Prescott. She has a daughter at home, a boy just off to college, and a husband who is absent far more than necessary -- when he's around he's the kind of male animal we now call a pig. In Helen's very verbal fashion which consists of a few aphorisms, many non sequiturs and some occasional (i.e., marginal) poetry, she looks back on her diminishing marriage to Charley while she falls in love with one of Bobby's professors, Francis. He makes her feel like ""a virgin with a lot of inside information,"" and she returns home to Charley who is bringing down the house -- now an independent woman. A light first novel which won't last very long but makes its points in a casually disingenuous fashion for other wives rather than sisters.