WAITING FOR CHILDHOOD <i> by Sumner Locke Elliott (Perennial Library/ Harper & Row: $7.95) </i>

Set in Australia at the turn of the 20th Century, “Waiting for Childhood” is the story of seven children left to cope for themselves after their parents die. Their father, The Rev. William Lord, expires at the breakfast table one morning. After the family leaves for a ramshackle house owned by a wealthy cousin, the mother loses her mind and then her life in an accident.

The eldest daughter, Lily, takes charge of the entire household, as Jess becomes a favorite of her rich cousin Jackie and watches her rival for Jackie’s affections fall fatally from a mountaintop.

These characters, “all talented, all deeply human, (are) all so beautifully realized that by the end of the novel we identify with them to the point of heartbreak,” Carolyn See wrote in these pages. “ ‘Waiting for Childhood’ manages to be at once terribly melancholy and extraordinarily exhilarating.”