Like his last novel, A Nest of Ninnies (co-authored by John Ashbery), which is set in the immortally uneventful Kelton, New York, [What's For Dinner?] also presents an easy and humorous middle-class world betwixt shopping center and commuter train. The sense of well-being, however, is very shortlived in What's For Dinner? Buoyancy, wit, a poet's ear for the way various people talk—all of Schuyler's strengths serve here to thicken the gloom of the psychiatric ward, where a third of the story takes place. A boozy housewife, Lottie Taylor, clambers onto the wagon, befriends other hospitalized suburbanites, comments on the sundry, unpleasant effects of personality-altering drugs, and subjects herself to the sadly loony twaddle of group therapy. Another third of the story is devoted to Lottie's neighbors…. The third third relates the attempt of an interloping widow … to make off with Lottie's husband…. In short, Lottie's husband philanders...