Tangled Web LOVE UNKNOWN

By Martha Duffy

The philanderer's nightmare unfolds in all its gruesome comedy. Rich, handsome Simon Longworth sneaks away to Paris for a weekend with his secretary. They are swanning around Fontainebleau when they encounter his wife's two best friends, both of whom believe that the Longworths, alone among their acquaintances, have a happy marriage. Can Simon, experienced lecher that he is, handle this? Certainly not. Rushing toward doom, he reasons that if he has managed to pull the wool over his wife Richeldis' eyes for 20 years, why not try to convince Monica and Belinda that they are blind too?

But Monica has seen all she wants to. To think that he was available all along! A spinster who lives comfortably in Paris, she has been half in love with Simon since the days when the three girls shared a flat in London and he came around to court pretty Richeldis with her "kind, insensitive eyes." It requires very little effort -- a nice French lunch with a glass of Beaumes de Venise at dessert -- to acquire Simon and launch a trite, messy affair.

What fun A.N. Wilson has with these foolish mortals. Love Unknown is his tenth novel, and his command of caustic social comedy seems complete. He is pitiless in describing the cliches of adultery so eagerly embraced by his lovers -- Simon's nattering about whether his many "meaningless" affairs have rendered him unfit for nobler passion, Monica's inflating to Wagnerian grandeur her demand that he leave his wife. Meanwhile, domesticity grinds on relentlessly, and it is the urgent and unpredictable demands of his large, eccentric family that finally defeat Simon.

The Longworths and their circle are vivid people. No one in this book needs money; no one is at a loss for words. But they suffer as well as sin, and their human failings are drawn with a compassion that makes the author's moral tickling tolerable. At 36, Wilson already has a formidable literary career. He peoples his little worlds lavishly, and his characters are the creations of an exceptionally alert and abundant mind. The Healing Art (1980) was an early dazzler, trenchant but somewhat raveled. Wise Virgin (1982) was perhaps his best-constructed novel. Now, in Love Unknown, his balance and his bravura have meshed.