London Lovers

While this charming book is called a novel, it reads like the memoirs of a woman who has enjoyed sexual and social freedom and has willingly paid the price that such a life can exact. The narrator, Florence Jones, shares many characteristics with the author; in fact, the London press called this barely disguised autobiography, the sequel to a previous Hardy book, the memoir Swansea Girls. Like Hardy, Florence grew up in South Wales in the 1930s and is a professor of English at the University of London, where she specializes in Victorian writers. Divorcing Charlie, her Welsh childhood sweetheart, when the marriage can't survive high-tempo life in London, Florence dallies with several other men before settling into a 14-year affair with Mick Solomon, an American professor teaching at Oxford, who is married to an invalid. On the surface, this long-term arrangement suits Florence well: she has decided she needs her own space, and Mick can be ""the steady dream-lover"" she desires, without threatening her with a more permanent and binding relationship. And yet, Florence admits she is prey to jealousy of the wife (whom she refers to as ""horrible Ellen""), and of the marital bonds she thinks she abhors. The novel's structure is responsible for much of its easy, intimate charm. In thematic and topical chapters (how the lovers met, what they wore and ate, how they behaved in bed), Florence mingles memories of each lover into an elegiac, but not depressing portrait of her life. Charlie and Mick both die, yet Hardy's light touch and her effortless rendering of characters who naturally weave literature into their romances make her novel a bright, intelligent read. (July)