Between the Laundry-Lines

MAGNOLIA STREET -- Louis Golding --Farrar & Rinehart ($2.50).*

Great oaks from little acorns grow, but great novels seldom grow from small potatoes. Latest literatus to attempt this particular impossibility is Author Golding who plants his small potatoes in neat rows on either side Magnolia Street. One row is Christian, one Jewish. Though each keeps its sprouting and blossoming pretty much to itself, the vines get tangled every now & then.

The most amiable entanglement takes place between Rose Berman. a Jewess, and John Cooper, a gentile sailor boy who loves her on leave and off. Their affair scandalizes the Jewish section, who act as self-appointed sympathizers with Rose's invalid mother. Rose runs off to London, consummates her love for Cooper there. A telegram that her mother is dying brings her back to Magnolia Street in a hurry; but after her mother's death she marries Cooper, goes off to live with him elsewhere.

Among the hundred-odd fairly odd characters who live through the two decades (1910-30) spanned by the book, the least forgettable are: Mrs. Tregunter who lives on weak tea, lettuce leaves and hatred of the Jews; Rabbi Shulman who has the Talmud on the brain; Benny Edelman whose rescue of Tommie Wright from drowning induces Philanthropist Emmanuel to give a Magnolia Street party, which brings the Jews and gentiles together temporarily. But Mrs. Wright sees Benny naked after the rescue; their subsequent marriage cuts Benny off from his Jewish family for good.

During the War everybody has his troubles, great & small, except Mr. Winburg the tailor, who makes a fortune selling shoddy raincoats. It is his daughter Bella, in whose bath salts are all the perfumes of Arabia, who gives the second, concluding Magnolia Street party, which brings Jews and gentiles together again. By this time, in spite of Author Golding's sincere and humane labors, the reader is likely to be wishing both Jews and gentiles either dead or living without such tedious detail.

The Author. Born in Manchester, England (1895), black-haired Louis Golding started writing at 6, got a story published at 9. He left Oxford, where he was a leading esthete, to fight in Macedonia, returned to take his degree. Since then, on account of his health, he has traveled much, has slept on Stromboli's quaking sides, on beds of rosemary in Corfu. He speaks French, German, Italian, Spanish, knows Greek and Arabic. He lecture-toured the U. S. in 1927. Other novels: Forward from Babylon, Seacoast of Bohemia, Day of Atonement, Store of Ladies, The Miracle Boy, Give Up Your Lovers.

*Published March 10.

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