Books: On the Greek Air

TEN SECONDS FROM Now (224 pp.)—Kay Cicellis—Grove Press (clothbound $3.50; paperback $1.45).

"The table was terribly untidy. Breadcrumbs soaked in the damp red stains, olive-stones floated in glasses, cigarette-ends sizzled in salad-plates. And we did not lift a little finger, we did not put a glass or a fork right, but just let the mess grow worse before us. We even leaned on it, growing callous, and delicately picked out of the wreckage the bare essentials. the bitter wine that was needed to keep the evening going."

This passage, midway through Ten Seconds from Now, not only attests to Greek Novelist Kay Cicellis'...