Angel Hotel

Anne Aylor. St. Martin's Press, $12.95 (169pp) ISBN 978-0-312-00103-2

Well-bred Ivan returns to Pellipar House after years of travel abroad. He falls in love with Elkie (or Luz, as she secretly calls herself), a voluptuous peasant girl. Their stormy romancehe's intellectual and repressed, she's intuitive and emotionaltakes them first to London, then to a French resort in Normandy and, finally, after a hiatus of 13 years, to France again. Elkie and Ivan's relationship is tragic and all-consuming, but the reader does not feel their emotion. Nothing much happens in the episodic, attenuated text, and Aylor never takes advantage of the wonderful potential her locale offers. (January 12)