A Big Storm Knocked It Over

Reading Colwin's ( Goodbye Without Leaving ) posthumous novel is a bittersweet experience; delight in her irresistible characters and her sensitive probing of life's mysteries is tinged with regret that we will never again see the reflections of her wise and imaginative mind. This is Colwin's most mature novel, her most deeply felt (but characteristically light-fingered) domestic fairy tale for adults. Colwin's characters share a supersensitivity, and a wide-eyed wonder toward even mundane institutions and events. Here, late 30-ish book designer Jane Louise Parker, recently married to plant chemist Teddy, has difficulty thinking of herself as a grown-up. Jewish, dark and ``a nomad,'' she has a free-floating anxiety, born of a lifetime of feeling excluded. She feels inferior to focused Teddy, the scion of a WASP family with roots in a small community in the Berkshires. Not much actually happens in this book: Jane Louise fends off the advances of her libidinous boss; she and her best friend, caterer and pastry chef Edie, become pregnant, and have babies. Motherhood provides Jane Louise with a new source of anxiety, but that is dispelled, temporarily at least, by her realization that her daughter Miranda will have roots and a secure identity. Meanwhile, Colwin examines some traditional institutions with a laser-sharp eye and an offbeat sense of humor. She speculates about marriage and families and friendships, about differences between the sexes, and about such existential questions as ``Were other people ever, ever knowable?'' All of this is expressed in witty, accurate dialogue and graceful prose, and with inimitable charm. (Sept.)