In The Little Girls, her first novel in nine years, Elizabeth Bowen has this to say: Nostalgia is perilous, and the buried past must be only cautiously unearthed. She says it by bringing together three women in their sixties who were close childhood friends. As little girls, they had shared a common experience; as old women, they demonstrate a common, time-sharpened talent for cattiness and cruelty.

This is not Elizabeth Bowen's best novel. It has a kind of pervasive artificiality, partly the result of a contrived plot, partly the result of comic scenes which do not work. It is necessary in a book of this sort that its unfunny point be made with considerable humor, and the humor does not come off. Furthermore, the flashbacks to the girls' life at St. Agatha's stand as the best parts of the book--not because the experiences seem more attractive but merely because the writing is better. Although the uneven quality of storytelling inadvertently reinforces the theme by making the present less interesting than the past, it seems hardly the best way to make a point.