by Rita Kashner
Here is a nice first novel of the suburban-house-wife-takes-small-leap-into-the-world genre. At 33, Beth Clahr hesitantly begins to take her fine soprano voice seriously. She also takes to her bed—alone—for escapist sabbaticals from her would-be career, her husband and children, ah ardent suitor and the League of Women Voters. These are ordinary people, indeed, but Kashner's protagonist has wit and passion. And Beth's obsessive domestic litanies (lunch in bag, bag in knapsack, car-pool day traded, burners off) are as powerful as any voices that ever drove more flamboyant heroines mad. (Macmillan, $10.95)
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