Does literary fiction emerge from romance or is romance a degenerate form of literary fiction? While the novel clearly has its roots in romances such as Pamela, or romances (the old meaning of romance) such as Ivanhoe, the two novels under consideration here take cues quite clearly from Romance as a modern genre.

These books are both about middle-aged women being bad. Bad, in this case, means that they fall in love in a forbidden way. It is the taboo that provides the excitement. It's a familiar formula, but does that mean it's a bad formula?

Sweetwater by Roxana Robinson is the story of a middle-aged woman who has just gotten married for the second time after her passionate and troubled marriage to a mentally ill journalist ended with his death. So far, she's blameless. But when she arrives in her husband's family's summer home in upstate New York, she rapidly falls in love with her brother's husband. Bad!

The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd is the story of a middle-aged woman who has been married to a wonderful guy for more than twenty years. Her mother lives in the Georgia Sea Islands and is losing her mind. The heroine goes to visit her, and suddenly falls in love with a monk from the monastery next door. He's doubly forbidden because not only is he a monk, but she's married. Very bad!

The difference between the two books is profound. Sweetwater shows its author's mastery of subtle observation, the telling detail, of class nuances, of family dynamics. Robinson is about ready to start giving Henry James a run for his money. Sometimes her nature metaphors are a little too pat for my taste, and there is a lingering taste of cheese, but there are depths to the book, and the author's honesty keeps it from becoming superficial.

The Kidd book revolves, to a certain extent, around a tchotchke shop called The Mermaid's Tale. If you've ever been to one of these seaside stores, with their various objects d'art constructed out of glued-together seashells and perhaps some watercolors by local artists, you already have a sense of Kidd's aesthetic. Kidd's heroine slips off in a canoe to knock the boots with the monk for a while, but ends up getting back together with her husband with little lasting harm done. I can't help but imagine what Kidd's audience would think about a male hero who ran away from his wife to shag a nun and then came crawling back.

The Kidd book is so bad it's kind of fun. But Roxana Robinson's Sweetwater is really a very good book-- it may be a little cheesy, but in the end, it's nutritious.