The modern heroines of Judith Rossner's recent fiction, Teresa in Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Dianne and Nadine in Attachments, were confronted with destructiveness, their own as well as the world's; Teresa was killed by a casual pickup, while Dianne and Nadine pressurized their husbands (who were Siamese twins) into being surgically separated, and then left them. Her new novel [August], without exactly brimming with optimism, has a new emphasis: on repairing damage, and living with scars.

August, traditionally, is the month when New York therapists take their holidays, leaving patients to cope with their interior lives as best they can. Dr Lulu Shinefeld is a successful, hardworking analyst, who deserves a break from the intellectual and emotional demands of the job; but her new patient, a young woman named Dawn Henley, has a terror of being deserted even for a month. For Dawn, acceptance is provisional and...