Latter Day Saint

SIMONE--Lion Feuchtwanger--Viking ($2.50).

The leftish German author of the pow erful novels, Power, The Ugly Duchess, Success, has written a leftish French novel which was inspired by Joan of Arc in somewhat the same way that Franz Werfel's Song of Bernadette was inspired by the Virgin of Lourdes. But Feuchtwanger's inspiration is less successful.

"No Bread;" "No Meat;" "No Gasoline" said the signs in the French shopwindows. As the Nazis dashed toward Paris, French soldiers lay by the roadside, nursing bloody feet which were blistered by retreat. Most of them were beaten men, but some drunken soldiers shouted: "We're waiting for the Bodies!" Meanwhile Simone, Novelist Feuchtwanger's 16-year-old Burgundian heroine, lay in her attic room poring over the story of St. Joan of Arc. The Maid of Orleans, Simone read, had heard mysterious "voices" bidding her save France by fighting the invader. Soon Simone began to hear the voice of her dead radical father, urging her to do likewise.

Local dignitaries were shocked when Simone suddenly swooped among them, shouting brash advice for delaying the enemy. They were staggered when, just before the Nazis marched in, Simone slipped into her uncle's gasoline station, blew the tanks skyhigh.

Then she slipped quietly back to her attic to read some more about Joan. The Maid, Simone noted, had not been put to death by the English invaders, but by 15th-Century French quislings. Soon Si mone found herself in the same fix. A haughty Marquis, the town's political boss, kept a collaborationist eye on her. Her Uncle Planchard was furious with her too, because of the gasoline tanks. Simone was arrested and, like Joan, lost her nerve, signed a confession. But when courage returned, Simone repudiated her confession, gallantly went off to Burgundy's most ruthless reformatory for the duration.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.