The Souls of Multimillionaires

WHAT BECAME OF ANNA BOLTON?--Louis Bromfield--Harper ($2.50).

THE FINAL HOUR--Taylor Caldwell--Scribner ($3).

Author Bromfield and Authoress Caldwell (British-born Mrs. Marcus Reback of Buffalo) are alike in two respects: both have many readers; both have very theatrical ideas of the world. Their latest novels reveal a further likeness. Both authors appear to have thought that a lush subject for fiction would be the regeneration of fabulously rich Americans by war shock.

Bromfield unveils Anna Bolton, daughter of an Ohio scrubwoman, as a glittering creature of wealth in Neville Chamberlain's London. He takes her from this lavishly mad prewar society, spots her at the Ritz in Paris while France is falling, has her strafed in her Rolls-Royce in a roadful of refugees, finally sets her down in Unoccupied France to run a village canteen, care for a motherless baby, marry a member of the underground. By this process she "grows a soul." Caldwell reintroduces a family she has written about before, the Bouchards, who are still the blackest-hearted munitions makers ever spawned by the folklore of America's peace-befuddled '30s. They quarrel, haggle, hate, interbreed with disdain, intrigue desperately against one another and their country. At the end of 561 perfervid pages, the toughest member of the current generation forces his malignant tribe to acknowledge that they had better cooperate with the war effort or else.

Readers who have time for only one of these books must choose either 1) to be bored by an author who elaborates a fancy plot without turning it into a moving story, or 2) to be stirred up by an authoress who turns a passion inside out on every page. It is a choice between cold tripe and hot tripe.

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