Maureen Howard has created her grandest heroine

yet in Expensive Habits, a dazzling, big American

novel. "So, let the story begin with potatoes," says

Margaret Flood, finding the humble beginning of her

life, a life that includes her celebrated career as

writer, two ill-fated marriages and the ample slice of

history she has witnessed, from McCarthy s witc, h

hunts in the Fifties to the Watergate bust.You will not

forget Maggie Flood once you listen to her wickedly

funny tales. She is an enchantress, a clever scold, a

feisty, formidable woman--a love.

Struck down in mid-story with a heart condition.

Margaret is defiant: she has always controlled the

plot. With the clock ticking against her, she finally

attempts to review her life, for herself and those she

has loved--to eaptare the lost truth for Jack Flood,

her first husband, an ambitious cardiovascular sur-

geon with a taste for female flesh; fur Bayard Strong,

her snn, a gified d innocent who lovingly protects his

parents from their failures. But expensive habits are a

way of life for all the men and wumen in this masterful

novel, and Margaret Flood is still holding the cards.

For Pinkham Strong, her greatest passion--society

boy, adventarer--who found his role as an elegant

radical in the Sixties, she finds no forgiveness. In

remarkably urgent prose, Maureen Howard reveals

the tragic moment when the story is taken from her

and the debts called in.

In Expensive tfabits the great figures of Margaret s

fashionable scene, literary and political, are rendered

as witty, unholy portraits: Sol, her Hollywood lover,

the producer with a glitzy talent for simulating reality;

the burnt-out, carefully shopworn editor. Philo

Pierce; and a group of aged communists, heroic

types, who live in bourgeois splendor. In high style,

Maurccn Howard s virtuosity encompasses all of Mar-

garet s false moves--her trendy scripts and

trendy novels--and asks some important questions.

What is left to value in a world where our deepest

feelings are grist for the mill, and what of political

commitment in a country that so desperatelywants to

be entertained? For what price does Margaret Flood

trade private life for the public name?

With this extraordinary novel, Mauryeen Howard

stakes out, more compellingly than ever before, her

position in the front ranks of contemporary writers of

fiction. Her inventive and powerful voice blends trag-

edy with farcical incident to present Margaret Flood s

redemption from spiritual waste.