The High Road

Edna O'Brien. Plume Books, $8.95 (22pp) ISBN 978-0-452-26306-2

Anna has fled to a verdant island to forget a painful love affair. Contemplating suicide, she is drawn to a peasant chambermaid. After an idyllic night on the mountainside, tragedy strikes. ``Though there are some fine scenes here in which O'Brien skewers pretension with an acid pen, the novel is fatally mired in symbolism and improbable events,'' said PW. (Oct.)

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