Rough Strife is Lynne Sharon Schwartz's first book, and you can understand her thinking: enough of all the downbeat stuff, I'll have a go at the good news. But unaccompanied by zest and witty insight, marital contentment is full of dangers.

Miss Schwartz tells the long, dull story of the years of happy marriage between Ivan and Caroline…. They have their dreary downs and drearier ups, and still go on loving, wanting and needing each other. Which is fortunate, because it is unlikely anyone else would put up with either of them—a more deadly couple I've rarely met in fiction.

Indeed, there is only one lesson to be learned from their tale: if you want a happy marriage, call your loved one by his or her name constantly. Caroline and Ivan do so all the time, like characters in a Mike Leigh play gone mad—even when they are alone and could not possibly be addressing any other happily married character…. Miss Schwartz is apparently considered 'brainy' and 'deeply moving' by her American critics. I fail to agree with them: to me the only memorable part of the book was the shock of finding 'diaper' had become a verb. The dreadful Ivan 'diapered' the baby, thus becoming a 'true father'.