The Honeymakers

The stork descends upon the haute bourgeoisie of a nameless Oxfordshire Cotswold town in Saville's polished, refined second novel (after The Marriage Bed). After five years of marriage to an antiques dealer 20 years her senior, 44-year-old Elfie Lyle, a picture restorer, yearns to have a baby. But her husband, Hugh, a grandfather (he has two grown children from his first marriage), believes himself too old to be a father again. This is a world where flowers, defined by their Latin names, are given as much weight as complicated human relationships, and residents are preoccupied with old stone houses, garden shows and beloved dogs. Urged by her mother and sister to have an ""accident,"" Elfie secretly stops using birth control. But when pregnancy does not occur, Elfie finds herself drawn into an affair with her neighbor, Philip Dacre, a management consultant who breeds roses and keeps bees, and whose own marriage is shaky. Much like the queen honeybee of Philip's hives, who uses one of the drones to impregnate her, a guilty Elfie uses Philip until she achieves her goal. Rumors fly, and Philip's marriage breaks up. The reader is left uncertain of the baby's true parentage. Saville's fluid writing serves a superficial exploration of an upper-class world that, underneath all its carefully constructed gentility, turns out to be driven by nothing loftier than primordial urges akin to those of the lowly honeybee. (Feb.)