Books: As a Boy Grows Older

A WOMAN OF MEANS (160 pp.)—Peter Taylor—Harcourt, Brace ($2.75).

Quint's mother died when he was born, and for the next ten years or so he was hung up, like some frayed little sweater, now in this boarding house, now in that, while his hardware-hawking father took to the road. Then father married a woman of means, and he and Quint went to live in her mansion in St. Louis.

Quint's stepmother had always yearned for a son as much as Quint had needed a mother, and she poured all her long-stoppered love into him. After...