THE PATTERN OF PERFECTION

A collection of short stories and shorter pieces touch on and touch off a woman's world, and Southern to Eastern settings, genteel to mundane circumstances frame familiar areas of awareness and recognition, conditions where lovelessness and loneliness prevail. There are women with dependent mothers, too independent husbands; protected children, neglected children; a college commencement presages the end of a life as well as a beginning; a girl is victimized by the demands of a mother and an aunt; a mother has an unexpected reflex of loss after taking her son away to school; and there are many remembrances, regrets, reproaches, along with more waspish interchanges. They all add a pointed postscript to recognizable settings and situations and are handled with a high degree of expertise.