The love-war continues for Alison Lurie but in [Only Children] she has introduced a referee…. For the title has a double meaning: the actual children in the story are "only children" in the sense of being without siblings; but their parents are "only children" in that they are just immature….

It's all a question of sexual relations and the nature of love. Only Children is an easily read, fast moving, summer weekend sort of novel; yet the underlying "message" is tough….

No one complains exactly about anyone else, but in each case one spouse is "crazy about" his or her marriage partner, and Lurie makes it clear that "crazy" is to be taken quite literally….

The novel begins and ends with Mary Ann's private imaginings, and the little girls' games, conversations and reveries punctuate their elders' throughout. Sometimes this is wonderfully successful, as when an interminable, unscripted play put on by the girls counterpoints a crisis in their parents' affairs. But Lurie herself is irretrievably grown-up; she has too collected and conscious an intelligence, I think, to "be," or be in, a child for very long, even though in describing their behavior, which is something else, she is faultless….

But this is a powerful novel. Imaginary friends or real people, her characters live on in the mind. And the clear intellectual framework is effectively embedded in a totally realized world of food and clothes and furniture and weather. Her setting is not a gesture towards clothing her theme; it is as actual as a recent memory. Anna in her hospitable solitude is an impressive creation, a modern woman's ideal model; and yet here too there is an open question. What happens to sex, for example, when possessive, romantic love is outgrown? People "'will sleep with their friends,'" she says. H'm. And as Celia, the traditional martyred wife, says of her, "'it's easy to be decent if you don't care about anybody too much.'" The indecency of love—which is a classical concept, as this is a classical novel—is most people's lot. It has its compensations.

Unfortunately, [Only Children] is as blurry and sentimental as Miss Lurie's previous books have been sharp and witty. The little girls' slangy, fantasy-filled narratives (which make up most of the book) are undeniably true to life but not particularly compelling for anyone ten or over; there is a pointlessly malicious caricature of a Southern woman (she begins nearly every sentence with "Ah" or "Ah'm"); and almost all the other characters are thin and wooden.

[In Only Children the] reader leaves behind the confines of the adult world to travel with the Hubbard family on a symbolic journey that results in a blurring, and ultimately a reversal, of the normal parent/child roles. Through a child's innocent observations, Lurie candidly exposes the failings of the adults while likening their insecurities to a child's vulnerability. The simplicity of style beautifully reflects a child's perceptions. However, what tension is created by the embarrassingly typical plot of two couples entangled by sexual flirtations while visiting a farm for a weekend is simply voided by the families' departure. The reader is left unsatisfied as Lurie skirts any serious commitment to the theme by casually dismissing the relationships the novel set out to explore.