Although Adams has sometimes been criticized for creating only characters from the privileged middle and upper middle class, perhaps only two of the five women whose lives she chronicles fit this description; one of these a frigid bigot and the other a depressed, self-hating martyr who finds herself only by abandoning her life as a suburban housewife, joining a commune of political activists, and taking a woman lover. The other three women are outsiders to the Eastern establishment they have somehow found themselves moving in. Megan Greene, whose consciousness is most central to the novel, is a smart, resourceful (although plump) lower-middle class adventurer from California (her mother works as a carhop); Janet is Jewish; and Cathy a Catholic in WASP territory. In fact, the one character who ends isolated, spiritually barren, and outside the embrace of friendship and rejuvenation is Lavinia, who epitomized social convention, class superiority...