Desire

This banal and thoroughly predictable tale of passion and woe in the 1950s should delight readers of Judith Krantz et al. Maisie Green recalls through first-person narrative her ``poor but honest'' beginnings in New York as she struggles to cope with the sudden marriage of her lover, up-and-coming sculptor Ivan St. Peters, to heiress Emma Blackstone. Emma's distraught ex-fiance, Julian Slade, is also Ivan's dealer, and he vengefully scuttles Ivan's career. Maisie, meanwhile, dries her tears on the shoulder of a wealthy author, marries him and, in an odd turn of events, tries to help the now-impoverished Ivan. Personal destruction, death and despair course through this novel of love and hate, but unhappily, Hampton ( Seductions ) merely glosses over the modern art movement, a missed opportunity that only adds to the shortcomings of a love story with promising potential related in minimal fashion. ( Jan.)