Sextette

Six MRS. GREENES--Lorna Rea-- Harpers ($2.50).

Old Mrs. Greene never uses an alarm-clock. Instead she trains her companion to whisper, "I think perhaps you would like to waken now and get up." Once awake, Old Mrs. Greene feels too old, too weary, to arrange her own little walks, rests, games of "patience." She lets her companion arrange them. Dinner is the sacred hour; not then, not even afterward, can the companion express a personal opinion. Yet. the companion once breaks that rule. Although only 38, she says to Old Mrs. Greene, "I should like to die in the autumn." Startled, Mrs. Greene ponders the disparity of their ages, impulsively gives her a ruby-and-diamond brooch.

Mrs. Hugh Greene, sallow, 70, wears sensible shoes but contracts cancer anyway. The three months remaining to her to live she would wish six, since in six she expects a grandnephew or niece. But she exults over the thought that her unborn heir will get an estate of 2,534 acres.

Mrs. Rodney Greene, middleaged, has principles. Her campaign of goodness starts when her husband attempts to pollute their nuptial night with cigaret smoke. She bullies her son Geoffrey with sarcasm and pathos, drives him to mask his independence. Thus she realizes her own ideal of good wife, good mother. She invites the other five to a dinner-party.

Mrs. Edwin Greene (on the telephone): Edwin's dead. Voice: I'm dreadfully sorry! Mrs. Edwin: Oh, are you?--It's an easy thing to be. You've got your husband at home safely tied to your apron strings. You can afford to be. When more normal, Mrs. Edwin weeps three times daily.

Mrs. Geoffrey H. Greene, in her 20's is Mrs. Rodney's long-legged, red-haired daughter-in-law. A painter, she strives to reconcile love and art. Her love is virginally confused, her art impressionistic.

When her love "clears" by consummation, her art acquires clean, voluptuous curves, a well-defined posterlike quality. Suddenly, however, her art switches to violent angles and she casts out love. Then, tiring of angles, she decided to have a baby, curious to know what kind of art supplements motherhood.

Mrs. Hugh Beckett Greene, 19, fair, chinless, has a boyish shape (shoulders larger than hips) but wants to have the girlish reverse. Her wedding-day confession:

"I get the most extraordinary thrills when Hugh kisses me. He musses all my clothes and untidies my hair, and my face gets all blotched and red. and I simply love it. In fact I think I'm very passionate; and it's a good thing if I am, because Hugh says he is."

The Six are to come together at Mrs. Rodney's dinner-party at 7:45 p. m. Another author might have attended the party, woven a plot. But Author Rea stops her character-sketching at precisely 7:35 p. m. leaving her six Mrs. Greenes-- all products of English homes, schools, marriages, incomes, social sets--just as she found them, separate beings related to one another only by name and background. Author Rea writes wisely but not well.