by Shelby Hearon
Fresh and comic, this novel is about a young woman with a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Texas. She ends a cold, five-year marriage and leaves Austin to take a college teaching job in New York State. Once she settles in, the heroine decides she needs group therapy to understand why her perception of herself is so different from the way others see her. From the moment she arrives for the first therapy session she takes over the group—and the doctor who leads it. Hearon, a Texan now living in Westchester County, N.Y. and author of Painted Dresses and other novels, deals with the differences between North and South, black and white, adults and teenagers, but especially between women and men. Group Therapy also offers some funny comments on modern behavior. One character, on a weekend at a Hamptons beach house, observes, "I think the reason that rich people have dumpy, cutesy places like this is that it makes them think they've come home. It's the same tacky-nice that their parents had, and now that they've climbed up the scale and know that you...have real linen chairs and original acrylics and Bartok on the stereo, and you don't say 'drapes,' and you don't eat out of paper cartons—well, they can just take it so long." (Atheneum, $14.95)
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