and Sallyjane—who has fallen in love with the idea of Russ the southern poet. Sallyjane dies during electroshock therapy, clearing the way for Russ to have a passionate affair with Cynthia; he eventually marries Deirdre, however, after she becomes pregnant with their second child.

A Southern Exposure is an excellent novel, another work that displays Adams’s talent for characterization and capturing a sense of place and time. The wisteria, the hydrangeas, the magnolia blossoms of Pinehill fill every page. The reader encounters a theme like that of Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone With the Wind (1936), a time in the American South facing radical change and grasping at the prejudices handed down through the generations.

Almost Perfect

Stella Blake is half Mexican, the only child of a not-quite-famous writer, the prodigal son of East Coast old money. Stella, whose mother is deceased, is estranged from her father and his latest wife. Stella lives in San Francisco and is a writer herself, penning feature articles for newspapers and the occasional magazine. She is poor, and once was the very young lover and companion to an aging film director. She has been cut off from the money of her father’s family and lives hand-to-mouth in a small, dreary apartment.

Richard Fallon is a narcissist, a womanizer, a closeted bisexual, a genius with design, a drunk, a great cook, and a high school dropout. He grew up poor in Patterson, New Jersey, and makes his living—on those rare occasions when he works—in advertising. Though Richard has many talents and skills, he mostly relies on his good looks to get through life’s rough spots. His former wife, Marina, whom he met and married in New Jersey, calls him to encourage him to face his many creditors and pay his ongoing debts. His former girlfriend, Claudia, calls him for the occasional sexual liaison, and his gay friend, Andrew, calls him to tempt him with new possibilities.

Stella and Richard first meet when Stella interviews Richard for an article she is writing. As it turns out, she never writes the article. Their encounter leads to a two-year romance, one in which Richard grows steadily weaker and Stella grows progressively stronger. Stella is not Richard’s type. He prefers women who look like him: blond, tall, blue-eyed, Nordic types. Stella, who is short, dark complected, and intelligent is everything Richard is not. She is far more in love with Richard than he is with her.

Throughout the novel, Stella and Richard drink too much. They have a small circle of friends from both sides of their relationship. Richard has an enormous studio, attractively decorated by him with mostly junk. He also has a spectacular house in the country, which he designed. Stella and Richard, however, spend most of their time in Stella’s newly renovated apartment, which Richard has transformed from drab to dreamy. They make love often, cook dinners for each other, and drink.

Stella’s writing finds an audience in New York, and a major literary magazine begins buying her stories; the magazine soon signs her to a lucrative contract. Richard, it seems, has a number of promising projects, but those opportunities slowly evaporate into the black fog of San Francisco. Richard, in yet another affair with tall blonds (this newest one lives in Germany), cheats on Stella.

With Stella’s success, the relationship is thrown out of balance, and Richard retreats to booze, more sex, and thoughts of suicide. His decline finds him fleeing the Bay Area to Mexico City, where he and his dying friend, Andrew, are spending Andrew’s money. Stella slowly begins to recover from the loss of Richard and meets a young doctor who is the son of one of Richard’s friends. Stella moves from San Francisco, too, and she moves from memories of her two years with Richard and learns what it is like to be loved rather than used by the one loved.

Superior Women

In Superior Women, four Radcliffe College graduates in the early 1940’s share their dreams, their fears, their lovers, and, eventually, more than forty years of their lives. The cast of “superior women” includes Lavinia, a Southern belle in the proudest tradition, who is blond, incredibly well-bred, and a horrible bigot to her bones. Despite her lack of character, she is the novel’s scene stealer. She is larger than life, and she embodies every negative stereotype of the sophisticated, image-conscious, backbiting society princess. She respects money and everything it will buy her. She is highly practical and calculating, and is intolerant of everyone she perceives as not being her equal, which includes almost everyone. She serves masterfully as the character readers love to hate.

Lavinia, of course, cannot be the central character in the book because she is not sympathetic. The lead role in the novel goes to Megan, an outsider. Born and raised in California, Megan is jealous of what she perceives as East Coast sophistication. A little pudgy, Megan is a people person and is popular with the boys. She winds her way through the novel encountering a series of lovers. Her most important lover is the tall, dark-eyed intellectual Henry, who has been having an ongoing affair with Lavinia for years. Megan never marries or has children, but at the novel’s end she forms her own modern family, a mixture of her actual relatives, her lovers, and some of her friends and their lovers.

Adams does not develop her next two characters, Peg and Cathy, as strongly as she does Lavinia and Megan. Peg is rich enough to impress even Lavinia; however, she is more overweight than Megan and marries the first man who has sex with her and knows her family has money. Peg moves to Texas, raises four children, and becomes active in the Civil Rights movement. She ultimately embraces her homosexuality and leaves her husband to move with her companion to open a shelter for homeless women in Georgia.

Finally, Cathy is more of a stereotype than even Lavinia. Trapped by her Catholic upbringing, Cathy finds herself loving a priest, getting pregnant by him, and then hiding the truth from her family and friends. Cathy moves to San Francisco and raises her son with the help of her mother but without the son’s father.

This novel is reminiscent of “girls’ stories” from the early twentieth century, in which friends take divergent paths through life. At the heart of Superior Women are issues of strength, style, and class. These superior women reveal their talents, weaknesses, desires, doubts, and passions through long years of association.