The Last Enchantments — Robert Liddell

Because it is a roman a clef with a recognizable, despicable ``key,'' Liddell's ``Oxford'' novel takes place in the fictional Christminster (or, more exactly, North Christminster), a university town with an undefinable year-round bleakness, as though whatever hope and promise were once the town's portion have been usurped by the university. The main thread of the story is that of Mrs. Foyle, a lower-middle-class widow, a ``Queen Lear or Mere Goriot,'' whose daughter Miranda has married a well-known actor and scion of Kellylynch Hall. Unlike other Oxford heroines (Sylvia Scarlett, say, or Zuleika Dobson) Miranda Foyle is devoid not only of scruple but of charm, and her unseen presence--like the impending Second World War--casts a pall over Mrs. Foyle's little circle. All this grimness is leavened, however, by Liddell's darkly comedic style and taste for the absurd, a style that is at its best when describing the unflappable hypocrisy and unstoppable gossip of North Christminster, or the grotesqueries of Mr. Waterfield, one of its elderly eccentrics, who divides his time between the study of unnatural vice in Havelock Ellis and the Society for the Restoration of Fallen Monarchs--``Mark you . . . it is the senior branch of the house of Braganza that will enjoy our support.'' (July)