Unexplained Laughter

The latest in a series of depressing romances has caused Lydia, a sophisticated London journalist, to repair to a primitive cottage in Wales where she hopes to forget about such matters. Ironically, she has chosen a site rife with love in all its many guises. Her normally steadfast companion, Betty, soon conceives a tendresse for Bueno, a neighbor who can love only God. Bueno's young sister is wedded to Nature and his sister-in-law is having an affair with the local doctor who is supremely in love with himself. Soothed by the onslaught of other people's passions, Lydia's natural wit revives to give us some deliciously amusing and trenchant observations about love, both sacred and profane. Another of Ellis's stylish forays into British mores (The Birds of the Air; The Other Side of the Fire, this work should expand her enthusiastic following. (July)