Books: Under the Cold Stars

FRIDAY'S FOOTPRINT (244 pp.)—Nadlne Gordimer—Viking ($3.95).

The 13 stories in this new collection deal with Whitest Africa. Some blacks do appear, but only to serve meals, provide background music or fetch and carry.

In other books (A World of Strangers, The Lying Days}, Author Gordimer's characters faced the fact that they were white men, "few, guilty and unloved, in the black men's continent." This time, mostly, they face themselves.

With only each other to treat savagely, they still do a consummate job. In the title story, fat, foolish Rita Cunningham marries her dead husband's...