Sins of the Mothers

Webster's listless fiction debut (she is the author of Yeats: A Psychoanalytic Study ), the story of a passive housewife who rebels against an obnoxious husband, tries and fails to rouse interest through a setting that long ago lost its elan. Although such a plot could easily occur in any era, Webster places her principals in 1974 Berkeley, Calif. Connie, trapped in a dead-end marriage to a fanatically religious man, coping with two kids and having an affair with a swinging bachelor, identifies with the kidnapped Patty Hearst. Prosaic references to Nixon, Latin-American revolution and Erica Jong's Fear of Flying remind readers of the social and gender restrictions Connie faces as she considers divorce. Scenes of domestic ugliness--Connie endures her husband's insults and abuse of their children, then runs to her smarmy lover for comfort--dominate the book all the way to its predictable finale. This out-of-time, out-of-place novel, which uninsightfully reprises the values of two decades ago, proves overlong and thoroughly dreary. (Sept.)