A Room of One's Own

BETWEEN THEN AND Now (160 pp.)--Alba de Cespedes--Houghton Mifflin ($3).

Alba de Cespedes writes so well about what it means to be a woman that she makes both male and female readers uneasy. She uses only one literary trick: unrelenting candor. And the only thing one can be sure of when her novels end is that life goes on. Daughter of a Cuban diplomat father and an Italian mother, Author de Cespedes writes with a Mediterranean mixture of controlled passion and shrugging resignation.

The Best of Husbands (TIME, Dec. 29, 1952) and The Secret (TIME, Oct. 13, 1958) dwelt on the theme that husbandly indifference is the most deadly of marriage-killing diseases. The heroine of her latest novel is not married at all, but she makes, ironically enough, a less than original discovery--that freedom from the conventional woman's lot is almost the last thing a woman can bear. Outwardly, Irene's life is enviable. She has left her rich but stuffy Roman mother and struck out on her own. Still attractive in her mid-30's she earns her living as a journalist, has her own little flat, a lover, and a fierce contempt for wealthy, married, gadabout women like her own sister.

Yet in this dream world of the emancipated woman, something seems to be missing--in fact almost everything. Irene has left the church; yet she envies those women who can sleep with a man and achieve real contrition at confession. Her lover respects her passion for freedom; yet she is resentful because he has never shown a spark of jealousy, and fails to give their affair the color of romance. She is so wrapped up in her independence that she will not admit the womanly advantages of being a dependent.

Then Irene's maid leaves. Author de Cespedes is so skilled that she can make this trite crisis the means of her restless heroine's selfdiscovery. The maid, Erminia, is a simple village girl who likes her mistress but finds her life confusing. She leaves to take a job with a woman who is a tyrant but at least leads a recognizable life: mistress of the house but subordinate to her husband, the master. Through Erminia's desertion. Irene comes to see that tedious family convention is not necessarily more depressing than her own joyless burden of freedom.

Between Then and Now does not promise that, as a result of her new understanding, Irene will change completely.

Like the honest writer she is. Alba de Cespedes simply lets her heroine discover that a room of one's own--and a man not quite one's own--are not enough.

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