Books: Nonbeautiful People

THE TRAVELS OF MAUDIE TIPSTAFF by Margaret Forster. 251 pages. Stein & Day. $5.95.

This novel, by the author of Georgy Girl, deals again with the problems that nonbeautiful people have in finding love. After a lifetime of succumbing to her own prejudices, guarding her emotions, and scrubbing herself as free of the responsibilities of love as her home in Glasgow is of dirt, Maudie Tipstaff sets out at the age of 68 on a round of visits to her three grown children. She wants some sort of contact. But what she finds is the misery, selfishness and isolation that she had inspired in them when they were small.

Maudie accepts the permanency of her alienation and returns home with the words: "Everyone is on their own." What sets Author Forster's trim, sparklingly clear little novel apart from other studies in loneliness is her attitude toward her central character. Though she is unsparing of Maudie, she also treats her with care and a humored understanding that demonstrates how it is—and why—that the loveless get by in the world.