Kathleen's Cloakroom

AMERICA, WITH LOVE (320 pp.)--Kathleen Winsor--Putnam ($4).

"She was intensely conscious of her own desirability, and sauntered along as if all the bungalows were filled with rich old men peeking from behind the curtains. Apparently she was convinced that Laurel Avenue was as likely a place as any other for her to be selected for ... a life of well-financed debauchery.''

Perceptive readers will recognize her right away. Her name is Vivian, but she is a lineal 20th century descendant of Amber St. Clare, the 17th century harlot whose life story (Forever Amber] was such a success that Author Kathleen Winsor needed no rich old man to launch her on a life of well-financed literary debauchery.

As a matter of fact, Kathleen Winsor need never have written another line, but she seems to suffer from a continuing compulsion to act like an author. After Amber, she took a whack at fictionalized autobiography (Star Money) and fantasy (The Lovers), and flubbed both. Her latest offering, a raffish account of a smalltown childhood, sounds like a Booth Tarkington novel as retold by Erskine Caldwell. In the Winsor world, the war between the sexes starts early, and the casualty lists are stupendous. One of the combatants is Ruby, who at 16 already has "a rather sagging and accessible look, as if defeat would be natural to her." Ruby wanders into a blackberry patch with Frank, a "strange amalgam of cruelty, license, fear, bombast and bullying." Then there is Vivian, who never does find her rich old man. Instead, she gets slapped around by a sailor. "His body closed in on her and there was a brief violent scuffle, with Vivian pounding at him, trying to bring her knee up to jab him." Later, of course, "she closed her eyes, sagging against him like a coat on a hook."

After that, the book offers enough coats and hooks to fill a good-sized cloakroom. Meanwhile, the younger kids scrape and squabble, while the old folks lead lives of quiet exasperation: a mother dies:a father loses his job; a family moves to another town. No small-town girl herself, Author Winsor (who grew up in Berkeley, Calif.) has caught a few authentic echoes of small-town speech. She quotes Dostoevsky to the effect that "there is nothing higher and stronger and more wholesome" than "a memory of childhood." But then, Dostoevsky never knew Kathleen Winsor, who makes childhood seem grubby, and sex sound like a bore.

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