THE 29TH SUMMER

This is psychiatrist Rubin's first novel but the form is really not too different from his casebook-histories, Jordi and Lisa and David, etc. Here the insights of the couch combine with the activities of the bed to tell the story of Annie Greensen, mono-stereotype spinster, during her 29th summer. She's got a mother (like a ""Mau Mau"") who'd rather see her married for a week than living on in single unblessedness... ""My divorced daughter. You could hold your head up."" As for Annie, only too aware of her biological endowment and destiny, ever since Larry she's been making the circuit--tours, organization dances, hotels in the mountains (""sub-human territory""). Now she meets a ""single grown man"" even without too much of a mother; but there's no attraction; and someone sent via her aunt; and at the end, really out of nowhere, Larry turns up again.... Rubin's old maid--well it's still the lowest card in the deck--but Rubin flips it up with a little schmaltz, a little schmerz, but with certainly none of the strength of Brian Moore's Judith Hearne or Seymour Epstein's Leah.