THE VICTORIAN CHAISE LOMGUE (119 pp.)Marghanlfa LaskiHouqhton Mifflin ($2.75).
British book reviewers are immune to the virus of British understatement. When Marghanita Laski's The Victorian Chaise Longue was published in London six months ago, the Manchester Guadian hailed it as showing "almost ferocious power." Said Time and Tide: "[Miss Laski] stacked every card against herself to make her final really-grand slam more miraculous."
Her British fans notwithstanding, Author Laski (a niece of the Labor Party's late Grey Eminence. Harold Laski) bids and makes no slams in The Victorian Chaise Longue, only a. quiet rubber game. She deals out a tidy horror story with...