Misalliance, The

Pantheon. Good in Good dust jacket. 1987. Hardcover. 0394553403 . Ex-Library; 15 oz.; 191 pages; Ex library HC w/DJ library markings o/w nice clean/tight condition. Blanche Vernon is one of those discreet, smart women one sees in restaurants alone. Recently divorced, she considers it a matter of honour to keep herself busy, scrupulously carrying out ordinary tasks as I f they mattered, until darkness falls. She will then open a bottle of good red wine (which she does with increasing regularity) a cook herself a simple nourishing meal. She can still expect the occasional visit from her husband, Bertie, who a year ago defected to a capricious, childishly demanding computer expert called Mousie. Blanche is convinced it is her own misguided sense of stability, gentility and fair play which has led to this state of affairs, and that, if only she could have cultivated a more voluble, petulant nature, things might have turned out differently. Oddly, mutual friends do not see it this way: rather than consideringBlanch 'too sensible', general opinion has it that she has recently become insupportably eccentric - overly fond of literary allusions and piquant non-sequiturs - and moist irritating, she doesn't allow one properly to pity her. Blanch has mentally appropriated the child before she even knows her name - Elinor. The unnaturally grave three-year-old who sits mute in the local hospital where Blanche does volunteer work has never spoken I her short life. .