The Other Woman

An affair with a married man lands self-sufficient, sophisticated 26-year-old Jennifer in the sticky position of ""the other woman''; but the racy image that label conjures up is hardly sustained when her lover Richard leaves his wife. The new life they settle into is one of such determined domesticity that it's hardly surprising the central character in this slender first novel finds it all somewhat dull. Jennifer's primary sentiment seems to be ambivalence: toward Richard and the role he plays in her life, and toward his two demanding boys, five-year-old Benjamin and the baby David. Only Ruth Ann, the scornful, soon to be ex-wife, draws any passion from Jennifer, as she pricks the younger woman with the sharp knife of her measured contempt. The elements of the contemporary portrait Lesser has drawn are timely and significant, and may be recognizable to many. Yet her spare prose, while competent, makes everything rather colorless. In the end, Jennifer seems no closer to an understanding of her own emotional core than she did in the beginning. (May)