Another Marvl Thing

In her deceptively simple, witty style, Colwin (Happy All the Time, Family Happiness continues to write with perception about the bliss and pain of people in love. Her protagonists in these eight linked stories are Josephine (Billy) Delielle and Francis Clemens, both intelligent achievers happily married to their respective spouses, who fall into an unlikely but tender affair when they meet in the offices of the highbrow journal to which they both contribute articles on economics. Billy is young, sloppy, often grumpy, unsentimental, determinedly minimalist in her tastes in food and clothing. Francis is older, sophisticated, urbane, committed to neatness and routine. The stories depict some of the same events told from their differing points of view; despite passion and familiarity, each discovers the essential unknowableness of the other. Both know the relationship will have to end, but the ache of parting is ameliorated for Billy by the consolidation of her marriage through the birth of a baby. Billy and Francis are somewhat improbable as lovers, and Colwin studs the text with too many pithy apothegms about the indelible effects of a love affair, but there are many moments in this slim volume when the reader is touched and moved. March 31