HIDING

Klein doesn't project the experience of shyness and withdrawal as Southall does fear; instead we have Krii, an 18-year-old American in a London ballet school, telling us all about her avoidance of involvement, about never fitting in, about her odd family life with mother in New York, father in London, and summer reunions--and about Jonathan who designs sets and costumes at the school and tries to draw her out. But Jonathan has an uphill fight even though she gives in to an affair with him, and somehow he goes and marries another dancer who wants him passionately and who, like him, wants children. The shock drives Krii into hiding for a week in her parents' attic. Later she and Jonathan touch again; she changes from dance in London to science at Yale and seems to be taking hold; Jonathan shows up there separated, after a baby. . . . But it's all flat: a case history stretched thin, a probing of puppets.