Trials of Friendship

Five female London School of Economics grads celebrate the 20th anniversary of their friendship and face the challenges of middle age in this accomplished melodrama from British novelist Hucker (A Dangerous Happiness). Determined free spirit Jane is choosing between mature love and her comfortable singleness. ""Well-married"" Candida has nearly lost her high-flying life (and wretched husband) over her passion for a frivolous bankrupt. Motherly Mary is helping to ease hysterical, masochistic Vanessa out of a disappointing affair and into motherhood. Polly, the central character, watches her marriage (to Vanessa's lover) dissolve, only to find a new love--and a new life as a novelist. Now Polly must regain her lost closeness to the daughter who once seemed ""the single success in her life."" Readers who like the idea of a Big Chill set among the chronically untidy British upper-middle class will enjoy this well-paced, nervily characterized work, these flawed women and their moments of fleeting generosity toward one another. (Jan.)