Gift from the Season

DEARLY BELOVED (202 pp.)--Anne Morrow Lindbergh--Harcourt, Brace & World ($3.95).

In the past Anne Morrow Lindbergh (Gift from the Sea; Listen, the Wind) has demonstrated a minor but nearly flawless talent both for feminine perception and straight reporting. This time she has simply bitten off what it would have been better to eschew.

Dearly Beloved is an attempt to say something fresh about love and marriage. As the words of the wedding ceremony unfold--in italicized inserts--each of nine wedding guests has his say in sternly allotted chunks of interior monologue. The wistful Mother-of-the-Bride has seen her life measured happily out in baby bottles and suburban coffee spoons but wonders if that is all there is to marriage. The chic, troubled Mother-of-the-Bridegroom, having failed to find fulfillment with a lover, concludes that even unhappy marriage offers a chance for spiritual growth. A bridesmaid muses on the whys and wherefores of premarital promiscuity. Grandfather recalls how he shocked his Victorian bride by burning up her nightgown on their honeymoon; he decides that married love is part of the stream of compassion that keeps humanity afloat.

Mrs. Lindbergh frequently manages a small, memorable insight. But for the most part, her symposium on matrimony, timed to appear at the height of the marriage season, rediscovers too much that is old or borrowed, too little that is new.

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