THINKS...

Like most of British writer/critic David Lodge's celebrated novels, this one satirically treats of Catholics and academics in a university setting. The hero studies human cognition by day and seduces women behind his wife's back by night. The heroine, a Catholic writer recently widowed, has come to campus as a writer-in-residence. Through the former's taped stream of consciousness (an experiment in his examination of thought processes), the heroine's journal, and the author's omniscient eye, we follow the progress of their incipient affair amid the parochial campus macrocosm. As interpreted by the expressive, intelligent Gordon Griffin, complex ideas and thematic underpinnings are made admirably clear and vital, while the characters seem unsympathetic and the humor nonexistent. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 02]