Mothers and Lovers

Earnest and honest, this story of Morgan Evans, a young Australian woman of prodigious gifts, pleads the lesbian cause while attempting to prove that a so-called normal marriage has failed because of the husband's alienation. Morgan, a top scholar and athlete who plans to become an actress, marries wealthy Duncan Ross, bears him four children and gradually realizes that his work supersedes family relationships. She tries to talk out a problem that Duncan refuses to acknowledge, and when she finds a young woman eager to share her bed and her interests, she begins to think of leaving him. This is not Morgan's first homosexual experience but a confirmation of repressed proclivities now made overt. Ugly divorce proceedings follow, complicated by Morgan's six-month theatrical stint in New York, during which time the children stay with their father, who wants to keep them and his wife as well. In the end, Morgan's sexual preferences are vindicated. Often polemical rather than dramatic, this first novel describes but does not create characters and, unreasonably, makes an ogre of Duncan, who has from the first been depicted as a withdrawn son of forbidding parents. But the prose itself is often stirring and the narrative clear, boding well for this author's next effort. (September 7)