This novel purports to be a multi-generational portrait of the fortunes, foibles, loves, and infidelities of a an affluent, extended New York City family covering the years over half a century, from 1901 to 1951. It concentrates on five characters, three women and two men, representing two generations. Some have considered it one of Auchincloss's best books; I don't agree. Its main problem in my eyes is that none of the five main characters is sympathetic: all the major players paraded for our view are fundamentally unattractive, unengaging, or uninteresting. And a book devoid of characters that can engage our sympathies or our interest has a hard time being memorable. An additional shortcoming is that its mixed narrative strategy--omniscient (third-person) narration in some parts and first-person narration in the "Ida" sections--doesn't work very well here: the narrator Ida is much too verbally sophisticated a chronicler for the kind of character she is portrayed here as being; she writes, indeed, just like the polished, sophisticated, urbane Mr. Auchincloss himself, although that is not at all the kind of person she is supposed to be. Narrator Ida and character Ida, then, are jarringly and unconvincingly at odds. It is an important miscalculation and a significant failure.

On the plus side of the ledger, there is quite a powerful and effective showdown scene at the end of the novel between a cold, selfish, egotistical father who is senior partner of the investment banking firm he has built up, and his daughter and son-in-law, who have schemed and connived behind his back to bring about his retirement so that the ambitious son-in-law can take over the firm. There is a fine irony here in that the father, who as an ambitious young man himself squeezed out his own benefactor and the founder of the firm so that he could take it over, now finds the same thing being done to him. Even the least of Auchincloss's books are readable, and in the main enjoyable, but I don't find this one particularly successful. (There is a small historical blunder about the singer Galli-Curci that reveals Auchincloss didn't do his homework very thoroughly.)

Auchincloss would like to see himself as a writer in the genteel tradition of Henry James and Edith Wharton; he is in fact more in the genteel tradition of John P. Marquand. His main fault is his glib facility: writing is too easy for him; he was written too much; and too much of it, smoothly ushered in on its cushion of graceful, well-oiled prose, is pallid, thin, brittle, superficial; too much of it is engaging enough while you're reading it, but forgettable, leaving no lasting imprint. This fault, I regret to say, is in evidence here.

Again, Auchincloss portrays upperclass New York patrician society, here with three generations off businessmen and their wives/lovers. The main character emerges as a compelling matriarch finally and satisfyingly triumphant after years of suppression and constriction. Well-told tale of a culture, a family, and a woman.

I found this novel interesting from a historical perspective. The change in the role of women in the United States has been one of the most major points of progess in the 20th century. This novel explores some of the issues involved with the emergence of women as a political force. As a novel, the characters are thin. Clarabel seems written externally; we are not drawn into her closely enough to be able to really feel at one with her. As a result, the story is interesting, but not gripping. I liked this novel because the main character is a Democrat. At least she had that good sense about her! :)

Being a fan of Mr. Auchincloss, I found this less than satisfactory. His prose and conversations are beautiful, but I think he borrowed from Pamela Harriman's life too much. I wonder if she would see herself as Clara. There is also a bit of the Luce family in it. But it was a quick and enjoyable read.

Mr. Auchincloss has written another novel of polished prose; so polished, it's hard to grasp the characters. The novel is set in the period that was the zenith for his dramatis personae - the 50's and 60's. Much of the action in this book is reminiscent of False Gods, an earlier novel about museums and foundations, and Diary of a Yuppie, told from the woman's point of view. The story of Clara, a siren and self made woman, the novel is clever, discerning, and wise, but lacks the vitality of some of his other works. As a summer novel, it's fine reading, and Mr. Auchincloss has an uncanny ability to get inside a woman's skull and look out at a world which will smile condescendingly at her skills and intelligence, and pat her on the head as a pretty little thing. A novel of manners, but a cautionary tale as well.

"Diary of a Yuppie" purports to be two things - and fails to achieve a sense of either. In no particular order, it claims to be a diary - a journal of daily goings on, both mundane and monumental, but all pretty much exhibiting the narrator's consignment to the prison of the here and now. Bereft of any foreshadowing, a true journal has no apparent sense of the was and would be. But author Louis Auchincloss never gives his unappealing protagonist the sense of being the center of his universe and living only for the moment. Instead, the hero is constantly pronouncing - it was not to be, or that plans were not going to work out. Worse, the protagonist is not even the central moral authority - that role goes to the hero's wife, constantly exposing the hero's shallowness. It's hard to believe that the central charachter is so self-centered when he yields the central role of his own story to another. Being that the self-centered hero isn't self-centered enough to own his own book, it's hard to visualize him as a yuppie - one of those trend-hungry, status-seeking urban denizens rendered extinct in the late-1980's. All charachters in "Diary" seem too "old-money", too entrenched in the old order that true Yuppies committed themselves to destroying. Auchincloss' yuppie is the last guy in the world you'd see lighting up - let alone inhaling. The hero's cultural background is too old-fashioned for those homo-sapiens who brought CD's to the market and fought the stigmas of multiple bankruptcy or early retirement. Even the idea of a journal seems closer to the self-absorbed slacker 1990's than the yuppie's that Auchincloss wants to portray. As a poorly conceived depiction of Yuppie-dom, "Diary" fails to satisfy, with the hero's moral dilemmas involving less of the hero than his reaction to the sufferings of others - abandones law partners, ex-wives, colleagues and relatives. This is the novel where the hero's greatest challenege is whether to stick with the upper-crust lawfirm that had nurtured him from law school. Pack it in your Beamer and forget about it.

This is a little book in more ways than one: its ninety small pages of 12-point type (with very generous leading) contain 14 essays. Each addresses political aspects of heroism in a tragedy by one of the two great French classical playwrights, though Auchincloss does not (and, given the material) cannot strive for balance: Corneille dominates Racine 7:1. At least a third to a half of each essay consists of quotation (and plain prose translation) of key extracts; the rest is plot summary, "common-sense" character analysis, and rapid thematic interpretation. Inaccuracies turn up now and again in the résumés and portraits, while the "readings" are seldom more than potted commentary, echoes of French school editions and baccalauréat manuals. In short, a disappointing performance by one of our premier fiction writers and judges of writing. David Lee Rubin, French Department, University of Virginia