Books: Something for the Girls

THE ECHOING GROVE (373 pp.)—Rosamond Lehmann—Harcourt, Brace ($3.95).

A Nietzschean argument holds that an intelligent woman would prefer a 10% stake in a superior man to 100% ownership of an average one. By that test, Madeleine and Dinah, the English sisters and heroines of Rosamond Lehmann's The Echoing Grove, rate low I.Q.s. For they spend the better part of 20 years and 373 pages scrimmaging for a soggy, half-deflated male football named Rickie, and the rest trying to run with him toward the goal post of happiness. Since Rickie develops a debilitating ulcer and...