A monaural recording which often gets stuck in the same place & usually is saying the same thing over & over (ibid. ""Saying: & what of it & what of it"") & also given to pointilliste punctuation (ibid. ""& so on. & on. & on""), this is the second of Miss Molinaro's novels written in this fashion. Actually it's more legible than the earlier Green Lights Are Blue although the things that it is saying over & over aren't very important: namely the amatory conditions which exist between a painter who isn't painting, & his daughter (adoptive) by his wife who is an interpreter at the U.N. who is painting better than he is, & his ""indecent"" interest in that daughter, & her loss of her virginity with a boy with a guitar who is then struck by lightning on the beach while her mother is also toying indiscreetly with a life-guard, & ending with a more literal stench when an older native falls in his own cesspool & drowns. . . . At best a caprice, in which the author's wayward way with the ampersand & the space bar on her typewriter distract the eye from the printed page--it is probably just as well.