Globe-Girdlers

SEA LEVEL -- Anne Parrish -- Harper ($2.50). Modern Magellans pay cash not only for the privilege of circumnavigating the globe but for the doubtful pleasure of doing it in each other's company. World cruises are obviously an improvement on the grand tours of yesteryear, for they cover more ground, take less time and trouble. Though not even the tenderest management can hope to rob sightseeing of its exhausting labors, sightseeing is only incidental, a kaleidoscopic background for bridge and cocktail parties. Such is the impression given by Authoress Parrish's Sea Level, a slyly malicious novel of a world cruise. Of the same category as Grand Hotel, Sea Level uses a large cast, plays few favorites, finds what plot it can in the personal history of some of its characters, their cat-&-mouse or cat-&-cat relationships. Alec Reade, like Kringelein in Grand Hotel, is a timid soul whose sentence of death has given him his first and last holiday. His cabin mate, "Pal" Turner, is a loud fellow of the baser sort who honestly wants to be friends with everybody. Banker Crowell quickly establishes himself as chairman of all entertainments. "Baby" Weedon has all the men on the ship running after her. The Robinson family invariably wins all the prizes for deck sports. After much heartburning in many lands the voyagers return, much the same, to their starting point--not the least satirical note of Authoress Parrish's inconclusive and entertaining novel.

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