.....or Mrs. Kerr on a pique (more than one, and with her home in Connecticut, almost in Darien) pursuing her lonely way as a parent, parodist, and a woman sore beset by modern living. Funny and refreshing, her maternal moments will find a sympathetic hysteria among others bedeviled by strident striplings and a perfect antidote toward accepted currently child raising programs: her take-offs, of Sagan, in Don Brown's Body, and her incisive words on writers (like E.B. White- leve majesti indeed) who move to the country -- these are gifted and good. Each short piece, from the introduction to the index, is loaded with laugh-out-loud-remarks, situations and ideas. A playwright, the wife of the Herald Tribune's drama critic, and recently a columnist, Mrs. Kerr's appearances in varying magazines, from Harper's Bazaar, McCall's, Ladies' Home Journal, SEP, to Harper's and the N.Y. Times Magazine, indicate the wide audience that knows her name -- and that should want to buy her book. And there's always Christmas to help this along. Really entertaining and comparable to Shirley Jackson's Life Among The Savages and other family familiars.