Etchings in an Hourglass

In a third volume of memoirs, following Bronx Primitive and A Wider World , Simon, the author of distinguished travel and historical works, recounts her adult years and speculates on death--which claimed her recently. She brings to this wide-ranging excursus the same omnivorous interest, realism and passion, tempered by humor, that animated her recollections of her Bronx immigrant childhood and adolescence. In pungent, elegant prose, its flow unimpeded by a strict chronological mandate, Simon evokes lovers, friends and chance encounters in often exotic settings that surrounded a life enriched by a sense of adventure, splendid or bizarre. Bitter, premature losses of a sister, first husband and 22-year-old only daughter, along with a failed second marriage, took their toll. But these did not quench Simon's appetite for new experience. Photos not seen by PW. (Aug.)