Catholic Girls

A cross-country trek to a funeral frames this humorous but unrelentingly arch and predictable account of four one-time Catholic seminary ""girls.'' Georgie, our guide through the book, is a second-string journalist desperate to regain a packet of love letters sent to the deceased in headier days and trying to redeem her career by landing a job at the tres chic, fantastically flaky new magazine, In. Straightlaced Mickey has made few adjustments to the modern world and can't fathom Kathleen, who has left the Church and describes herself as ``living in sin, way in,'' with a juvenile lover named Lance. Their journey en route to comfort bereaved adultress Agnes Mary, is supposed to be one of self-discovery, but Reed (Armed Camps offers few striking revelations, while a morass of guiltthat ubiquitous Catholic guiltovershadows those truths that might have hit home. (September 21)