IMAGES IN A MIRROR

This belongs to her modern background books, and is again a rather deft handling of the period in a woman's life when marriage and children and household tasks begin to pall, and a new interest upsets her emotional applecart. Anyone who ranks Undset among the foremost of today's novelists, on the basis of Kristin Lavransdatter, will find this a disappointment. Somehow, her modern women are shadowy creatures -- her modern background, two dimensional, compared with the vitality and lusty reality of her 16th century men and women. There is, however, a market for her modern novels, and this is a predictable and dependable book for that market.