[If "Almost Paradise"] sounds a bit like a novel of domestic bliss, it is exactly that—for a time. This perfect world doesn't last, however; the serpent enters the garden in the form of family scandal, and bliss turns to crisis. Unfortunately, there is an unintentional split between social stereotypes throughout the book. Jane, her mother and the Jewish theatrical agent Murray King are vibrant wiseacres whose posturings only exaggerate their emotional nakedness, while their gentile counterparts (Nicholas and his family) are privileged drips. There are artistic problems with the book—a reliance on such conventional indicators as looks and money, a less than integral structure of events—but Miss Isaacs keeps the plot boiling, and mostly one is reading too absorbedly to notice.