I can't complain that I wasn't moved by Judith Guest's "Second Heaven."… I was moved, I really was. I felt tense and worried in all the right places and sighed with relief when I ought to have and cheered when the heroine, Catherine (Cat) Holzman, snaps at her psychiatrist: "I think you make a fetish out of refusing to give advice. It's not natural. You should see someone about it." (Lo and behold, he then gives advice!)

I even cried in the one or two places I was supposed to, which is no more or less than the author, with her apparently exquisite sense of control, would have wanted….

Certainly, "Second Heaven" can't really be accused of being clichéd. The prose may be a little bland (and riddled with split infinitives). And some passages may sound like watered-down William Faulkner….

All the same, Mrs. Guest has a...