WATER Music, by Bianco VanOrden (254 pp.; Harcourt, Brace; $3.95), is at bottom an old-fashioned novel about the tortuous ways of young love, even if its style flashes like high-IQ gossip and the characters are as plausibly etched as perfect counterfeit money. In 309 East & a Night of Levitation (TIME, Oct. 7, 1957), Author VanOrden showed a nice disinterest in anything ordinary. Now she makes up ordinary faces as if they were being prepared for an Italian fancy-dress ball. Her young Americans are rich, educated and self-consciously tortured by love and the need to prove that art and personality are...
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