SPENCE + LILA <i> by Bobbie Ann Mason (Harper & Row: $6.95, illustrated) </i>

A ruminative novel about the love and interdependence that bind a taciturn farmer and his gregarious wife. When Lila has to undergo surgery for breast cancer and arterial blockage, the sophisticated technology of modern medicine forces the couple to confront the coldly mechanized world of the ‘80s, which they have managed to keep at arm’s length. Their Kentucky farm has become a retreat to an older time and a mellowed vision of agricultural life. But the pain of separation is more wrenching than the sense of dislocation. Lila and Spence discover they are lost without each other, a fact that their well-meaning children are unable to disguise. Bobbie Ann Mason draws a warm portrait of two people joined by an enduring affection, tempered by years of conjugal life.