Looking for Love

Nora Heller, divorced, fortyish, attractive, well-adjusted, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of AH! , formerly American Homemaker magazine, in Ellen Feldman's predictable third novel, after Conjugal Rights. Riding the Amtrak on the way to visit her mother in Florida, Nora meets Max Miller, a divorced, fortyish, attractive, well-adjusted, successful lawyer, and although she sleeps with him in the novel's first paragraph, she resists falling in love because he's the son of her mother's friend, thus part of a conventional lifestyle Nora disdains. Soon it's revealed that Max is a really nice guy and he really likes trains--they're even sort of a hobby--and unlike Nora, he's not a workaholic, so the question remains: Can Nora make the leap to a ``normal'' life with Max? The novel lacks dramatic tension and Feldman's standard, tired prose is sprinkled a little too generously with cliches. 50,000 first printing; $50,000 ad/promo; first serial to Cosmopolitan; Literary Guild selection. (Jan.)