Wife's-Eye View

THE BRIGHT PROMISE (373 pp.)--Richard Sherman--Litfle, Brown ($2.75).

Richard Sherman is a daring man who thinks he knows what goes on in a woman's head. He has written The Bright Promise in the first person feminine--as a wife's-eye view of an able, unstable husband whose career fluctuates between life on the dole and the brilliant editorship of a picture magazine. But despite the author's daring viewpoint, readers are not likely to know Amy Hardin Ellery any better than other heroines of women's magazine fiction.

The story begins with Amy's marriage to jobless Lyle Ellery the day F.D.R. is inaugurated (and the banks are closed), ends as F.D.R.'s coffin is brought into the White House. Although there is a liberal sprinkling of headline stories of the period, and a deal of color which will call up a pleasant nostalgia in those who like to look back, this is by no means a historical novel of the Roosevelt years. Nor is it a typical story of "Metropolitan Americanus, Middle Class, White Collar." Amy may be unremarkable and typical enough, but Husband Lyle is a Harvard A.B. (cum laude), son of a millionaire father who committed suicide in the '29 crash, and of a dipsomaniac mother with blue-dyed hair. By leaning heavily on these and other glamorous characters, Author Sherman spares himself the much more difficult task of making ordinary people interesting.

Bright Promise was serialized in Good Housekeeping, has been sold to 20th Century-Fox, and is a Literary Guild selection for September. It is not nearly so bright as its success story promises.

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