MORNING

Thayer has increased the suds content, more or less diluted in her earlier ""faintly lib"" novels, for a high-decibel chronicle of one woman's medical and emotional cope with infertility. Thirty-four-year-old free-lance editor Sara Kendall, living on Nantucket and very much in love with carpenter husband Steve (he of the ""prize-animal body""), had thought that once precautions were discarded, conception would almost immediately result. But month after month passes into history (the recurring Bad News is exhaustively detailed), and getting pregnant becomes a full-time obsession. A subsidiary interest fortunately surfaces, however, when, as Sara edits one of the perfumed novels from a romance, factory called ""Heartways House,"" manuscript pages flutter out from the author's ""serious"" work. This is a story about a Kansas farm girl who counters grim Kansas and early rejection by snobs by breaking loose--with brains and a tremendous body--to a lusty life in Europe (Sixties' London ""was swinging then and I swung""). The decidedly autobiographical novel is the work of recluse Fanny Anderson, who, in her 50s, won't be seen because she's not gorgeous anymore. (But she is, she is. When Sara Finally tracks her down in Boston, Fanny's mohair dress fairly ""slid over her voluptuous body."") Obviously, Fanny needs straightening out. So does infertile Sara, who has been snapping at poor Steve, accusing him of seeing an old lover, and cringing at the sight of young mothers and the pregnant. There are lab tests and a hospital laparoscopy, but still nothing. . .until. . . Heartways' romances, Fanny's work, and Sara's tale are all of a pulpy piece, but the subject--and the author's previous work dealing with women's matters--will undoubtedly attract interest.