Late Love CL

Owing to the ``longevity revolution,'' the breakup of families and permissive social attitudes, many widows and widowers remarry, observes thrice-married psychotherapist Simpson (Poets in Their Youth). Her ``descriptive and reflective rather than statistical or scientific'' study is based on interviews with 50 mostly middle-class Eastern seaboard couples-a few as old as 90-who remarried after age 55. Simpson recounts the often moving stories of her subjects, some of whom resumed a lost love after 35 or 40 years. She probes the emotional, sexual and practical aspects of remarriage, including relations with adult children who oppose the union. Simpson wisely distinguishes between the ``generative'' love of a young couple and late, ``existential'' love, ``which reflects a poignant awareness that all life is transient [and]... we can no longer deny our mortality.'' (Dec.)