Books: Feminine Ripples

A WREATH OF ROSES (243 pp.)—Elizabeth Taylor—Knopf ($3).

"Life persists in the vulnerable, the sensitive," said the aging artist. "They carry it on. The invulnerable, the too heavily armoured perish. Fearful, ill adapted, cumbersome, impersonal. Dinosaurs and men in tanks. But the stream of life flows differently, through the unarmed, the emotional, the highly personal . . ."

"You turn my anxiety about Liz into a disarmament conference," Camilla said.

Adventure Enough. In this typical "bit of dialogue, Novelist Elizabeth Taylor skips ahead of the reader to state—and quickly puncture with mockery—the best justification for her novels. A Wreath of Roses is her fourth,...