';Reads easily, even breathlessly. . . . The subtle but intensely felt shifts of closeness among the young women are lovingly and expertly laid bare.' -- John Updike This ambitious and richly compelling Superior Women is in the grand tradition of The Group and Wendy Wasserstein's Uncommon Women and Others, a tradition continued by J. Courtney Sullivan's Commencement. Radcliffe, 1943. Five young women, newly admitted to college, meet for the first time. Taking us into their lives at college, and beyond, through four tumultuous and crowded decades, Alice Adams has given us a novel rich in all tee pleasures of characterization and incident and social observation that we have come to expect from her.