Denise

Denise

NOVEMBERNIGHT--Anonymous--Bobbs Merrill ($2.50). Like the sinister figure of a masked and hooded surgeon the anonymous author of November Night morbidly and efficiently slits the emotional substrata of complex characters. Denise, egocentric wife of a self-made man, is a neurotically dissatisfied Hedda Gabler. Denise's shadowy longings finally take form in a kind of worship of her own expectant motherhood, and crisis-inspired, she joins the Roman Church. She has a pet cocoon of a Hop Dog moth which she cherishes as a symbol of her belief in life in the chrysalis. When the Hop Dog emerges her vague urge for fulfillment will be realized. For Denise, however, it is never realized. The moth perishes due to her neglect, and her child, her ultimate justification, dies stillborn. Then Horace, in spite of the fact that he is opposed to Catholicism, shows an odd streak of under- standing by having the moribund infant baptised according to the Roman ritual in order that it may be immortalized for her.

This anonymous author, probably a woman, whose almost supernatural gift for intuitive writing was responsible for 'Miss Tiverton Goes Out,' has produced a significant psychological study. The importance of the book dwells in the amazing quality which the author has for under-standing and analyzing human* conflict, subconscious reaction.

Again, Denise

THE FRENCH WIFE--Dorothy Graham --Stokes ($2). Victor de Lambesc left his American wife in Touraine while he set off in an airplane for Africa and another woman. On the way, his plane fell and squashed him to death. This left Denise de Lambesc, netted in a foreign tradition, to fashion a slow existence for herself, for her two sons. Faced with the choice of a new husband, she at last declines the proposals of her husband's stepbrother although these are reinforced by the per- suasions of his family. Instead she marries her U. S. lawyer, Bryce Sutherland (clubs: Racquet and Tennis), because he is a bigger and better man. Author Graham writes polite romance in mannered English and affected French. Disregarding the roses and raptures of vice, she paints, with a small brush dipt in gilt, the lilies and languors of virtue.

Saint Nick

THE OLD NICK--F. W. Bronson-- Doubleday Doran ($2.50). Nicholas Lord is a sporty but kind hearted old gentleman, like Santa Claus, who enjoys nothing so much as a good scotch highball except, perhaps, the "comradeship" of his three sons or his two grandchildren. To each of the three sons is devoted one third of the book; Eliot, who leaves his nervous wife to go abroad with Maun Jameson; Gilbert who starts a boy's club, impregnates Lois Clement, and dies in a motor crash; lastly, Kevin Lord whose "blue eyes always seemed to hold a promise of intimacy" and who writes a bad novel as a memorial to Claire, his well-loved mother, then marries Lois. Author Bronson, who edited the Yale Record only a few years back, is acutely sensitive to words, to emotions. He is not, however, very discriminating in his choice of either, and he has completely forgotten the healthily ribald laughter which characterized the funnysheet he once headed. His second novel, successor to Spring Run-ning., bears a false relation to life. But for those who like three lumps of sugar and a dash of cream in their fiction The Old Nick will be a complete success.