THE CUTTING EDGE by Penelope Gillian Coward, McCann & Geoghegan 150 pages; $8.95
There is not much meat to this delicate, whimsical little novel about the friendship of two English brothers, but the bones clack together nicely. Peregrine is a precocious child. His younger brother Benedick is thought to be dull, because for several years he speaks in a private language only Peregrine can understand. Their father, a literary scholar and full-rigged eccentric, is never ruffled by his odd progeny; but their mother, a dithered creature who soon fades out of the scene, is confounded. At the age of six, for example,...