Full Moon of Women

The quirky author of 13 returns with fleeting, fictional glances at her ``sisters in irony,'' 29 women ``whose talents, unusual (usually unwomanly) interests, & dedications singled them out for notice by their contemporaries. --Rarely for their admiration.''stet this oddball punctuation Her gallery features the heroine of Molinaro's own adolescence, Charlotte Corday, murderess of French Revolution leader Jean-Paul Marat; Marie Laurencin (`` `She was not a great artist, far from it, but a pleasing one' Somerset Maugham said, perhaps to erase the long nose & fastidious mouth from the portrait she painted of him in 1936''); hapless Cassandra; controversial mystic Madame Blavatsky. However, Molinaro's evocations of these dazzling figures rarely evince much imagination or reveal more than established facts (a notable exception is her piece on nuclear physicist Lise Meitner); the bonds among the women are suggested but not developed. Molinaro closes her final chapter, on Snow White (``the perfect victim every man dreams of rescuing''), by citing Apollinaire: ``Mirrors should reflect more deeply.'' So should fiction. (July)