THE WAY IT IS NOW: Stories about Women

The way it is now, not too now, when life is reduced to small expectations and even smaller returns as in the title story where a recently divorced woman retreats from, then clutches at a man she really doesn't want. Most of these stories (upper magazine level -- from The Atlantic to Redbook) deal with prevalently unhappy women of assorted ages -- growing up -- growing away from parents, husbands, children. The rather well-groomed circumstances which attend them do not necessarily afford any protection: thus in ""The Visit,"" a father and mother find that a check is the only point of contact with their uncommunicatively unhappy daughter; on the other hand the middle-aged woman of ""Please No Eating No Drinking"" who has shed her husband enjoys her immaculate and uninvolved life which is also more unaware than it should be; the busy ""festivities"" of ""The Mourning"" further conceal why a girl took her life and another occasion, ""The Wedding,"" refracts the hopelessness of two of the attending guests. And so it goes -- small recognitions, rejections, you attempt to isolate or evade -- nicely proportioned to the occasional insight.