Three lives

With Three Lives, Louis Auchincloss turns in another commanding performance as our most entertaining and intelligent chronicler of monied society, a world as morally complex as it is privileged. In "The Epicurean," Nat Chisolm is a relentless seeker of pleasure, a man whose financial ease and energetic pursuit of enjoyable diversions only make him more aware of his emotional bankruptcy. Alida Vermeule is "The Realist," an ambitious woman who engineers her husband's. Ascent as a lawyer and exercises the limited power available to women of her time in remarkably unlimited ways. And in "The Stoic," George Manville takes the virtuous example of his investment-banker mentor to new levels of puritanism, living an ascetic's life governed by the stringent checks and balances of the ledger sheets he cherishes more than any human being. Indirectly governed by different schools of philosophy, each of these three characters must make his own. Concrete, irrevocable decisions - and accept the consequences. Auchincloss balances piercing shrewdness with a deep sympathy for his characters. Three Lives confirms his place in the landscape as one of America's most elegant and entertaining writers.