If it wasn't set in the Adirondack mountains, this novel could be classed as a suburban drama in the manner of Updike or Yates, dealing, as it does, with the mores of, in a typically satisfying Banks phrase, "leisure-class Republicans" in the 1930s. It was a time when men struggled to be men and women rolled up their sleeves or else had a breakdown. Using only a few references - jazz records, Muriel King frocks, first editions of Gone With the Wind - Banks evokes the decade's glamour, but also its uncertainty, as when a Nazi Zeppelin floats overhead. Only occasionally veering into schmaltz or farce, this is an enjoyably practical take on bourgeois relationships that finds room for infidelity and romance, pig-headedness and humility, and just the one shallow grave.