Books: Unfrail Mother

THE CHEERFUL DAY (242 pp.)— Nan Fairbrother—Knopf ($4.50).

English Author Nan Fairbrother's books are minor prose poems in praise of practically nothing. Six years ago, in An English Year, she wrote with impressive charm about a stretch of living in the country. In her new book, she is back in the city, and she writes mainly about the business of keeping house in London for a doctor husband and two growing boys. The story runs uncomfortably close to the banalities of the women's magazines, and could have been a crashing bore. Instead, it is a sometimes placid but always graceful commentary on...