No Place to Cry

If the other two volumes in the projected Bradshaw Trilogy are half as absorbing, edifying, amusing and intelligent as this one, Kennedy ( In a Far Country ; The Domino Vendetta ) has a trio of winners. The Bradshaws are an old, landed Northumbrian family whose only son, Raymond, after a tragic love affair, flees the North of England, sails to Boston and there re-creates himself as American born. His marriage to Anna Bardoni essentially ends when she leaves the Illinois college town where Raymond is teaching to return to New York, taking with her their young daughter Helen. After her father's death, Helen discovers that Raymond had a family in England; she and Jesse, a young man whom Raymond had virtually adopted, travel to the Bradshaw estate. Periodically, the author steps back from his characters to discuss them in a tone at once serious and very funny: ``There are few people, modest as they may be . . . who do not think themselves expert on the subject of marriage.'' Kennedy's achievement in conveying that people love and suffer and grow is crowned by the fact that, without recourse to any bedroom scenes, bad language or catalogue of possessions, this book is impossible to put down. (July)