Neither the author's reputation nor the title nor the first tranquil pages can possibly prepare the reader for this astonishing book ["The Girl in a Swing"]. Richard Adams is best known as the author of "Watership Down," an animal fable that has attracted a following scarcely less fanatical than the early Tolkien addicts. The title of his new novel evokes childhood pleasures and the charm of a Fragonard. Its early pages on first sight seem to be the relatively commonplace memories of a conventional middle-class Englishman [Alan Desland] whose father owns a china shop in Berkshire.

Indeed, even as the events and style of the narrative take unexpected and breathtaking turns, the pleasant, familiar, civilized comforts of provincial England never disappear. And, remarkably for a work of modern fiction, these comforts are treated without scorn or sentimentality, but with an intelligent and philosophical fondness reminiscent of an earlier...