Books: Middle of the Journey

TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN (372 pp )—Irwin Shaw—Random House ($4.95).

For Jack Andrus, the memories that come with middle age are like bad teeth: he counts the day good when they do not ache. Among the shooting pains: three marriages, the latest still intact but more testy than tender; an estranged college-age son who loathes him; a foreclosed career as a brilliant young cinemactor; the faces of friends who died in the Spanish Civil War or at the talent-poisoning wells of Hollywood. The anodynes are joyless—alcohol, sleeping pills, the humdrum routine of his NATO underling post in Paris, which is good...