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1282136 
Journal Article 
Newspaper 
Books of The Times; Cheerless Affairs 
Kakutani, M 
1987 
0 
New York Times
ISSN: 0362-4331
EISSN: 1553-8095 
New York Times Company 
1.18 
For that matter, those folks with families or friends are hardly much better off in Ms. [Beryl Bainbridge]'s view. In ''The Longstop,'' members of the Jones family speak to themselves in self-absorbed monologues that rarely intersect in anything resembling a real conversation; and in ''Perhaps You Should Talk to Someone,'' talks between mother and daughter devolve into ''just words.'' ''If you ask me,'' says the daughter, ''it's her that can't communicate. She's so screwed up about this trust thing that she's been rendered practically speechless except for muttering about tidiness and such like. She'd like to tell me to work harder at school but she knows it's a losing battle.'' To make matters worse, these stories share a severely limited image bank. At least three of them (''Mum and Mr. [ARMITAGE],'' ''Through a Glass Brightly'' and ''The Man Who Blew Away'') feature similar scenes depicting trees or flowers planted in ugly concrete tubs; and two of them (''People for Lunch'' and ''The Worst Policy'') use the same narrative setup, in which an obnoxious teen-age boy harasses an adulterous couple. In the end, such repetitions do a disservice to Ms. Bainbridge's usually agile talent. Indeed, they contribute to the feeling that these stories are nearly as attenuated as the world portrayed by the author. 
BOOK REVIEWS; (Jul 11; 1987)