Keel Over Europe

ISABEL AND THE SEA (307 pp.)--George Millar--Doubleday ($3.50).

Britain's George Millar, whose autobiographical novel Horned Pigeon (TIME, June 10, 1946) was one of the few intelligent consequences of World War II, describes himself as "a weedy young man of slightly effeminate aspect"--neglecting to add that his war record won him the British Distinguished Service Order and Military Cross, the French Legion of Honor and Croix de Guerre. With the same misleading modesty he insists that he is merely a "landsman"--but his new book is all about a voyage he made in his 31-ton ketch Truant two years ago, from England to Greece, via the English Channel, the rivers and canals of France, and the Mediterranean Sea. His crew consisted of wife Isabel, whom Millar describes as if she were a delicate platinum watch to which salt water would be fatal, but who suggests, in action, the most efficient boatwoman since Grace Darling.

Isabel and the Sea will make even a coal miner imagine himself "running free under number-two jib, staysail, mainsail, and mizzen . . . setting course for the volcanic island of Stromboli." In addition to nautical charm, it is loaded to the gunwales with deft and lively pictures of European life and manners--pictures which unroll as on sensitive film as Truant weaves her way across a continent.

Reason Enthroned. As a good novelist should, Author Millar eavesdropped all the time. In a Riviera restaurant he heard his plum: two lovers arguing about the menu. Said she: "I want framboises a la creme." Protested he (thinking of the bill): "You're joking . . . [But] you know you can have anything you want within reason."

"Is reason enthroned again? Oh! You men of business! . . . Last night you declared that you would lay the earth at my feet."

When the Millars entered the lower waters of the Mediterranean, Isabel begged: "Steer where the sea looks flattest." Truant's trip around Italy had often been a series of bucking, racing dashes from port to port in rainstorms and gales, with anchorage snatched wherever it offered.

All down the coast, the wounds of the war stood out like massive scars. Civitavecchia (the port for Rome) appeared to have been "eaten and regurgitated by mastodons." Italian squalor was worsened by the morbid excitement it seemed to arouse in visiting foreigners, who, perhaps "a little stifled by ... civilization . . . when they saw a [place] that had been smashed into temporary primitiveness" felt an animal instinct "to leap into it, as though into a bath."

Lotus Land, G.l.s' Last Stop. Far different was famed Capri, where the Millars touched on the last leg of their voyage. In one of his book's most evocative passages, Millar describes the effect of this lotus land on the American soldiers who were in rest camp there. From members of "the most boisterous" of armies they had changed into "quiet, ruminative, and lazy" dreamers, "liable to form touchingly unmartial habits, like carrying walking sticks, or putting blue flowers in their hats, or chewing at the stems of roses while the blooms hung below their chins ... A dozen of them were lying on the steps of the Quisisana [Hotel] and as we walked past they lifted heavy-lidded eyes to look appreciatively at my wife. Two of them, mounted on plump donkeys, followed us down the street, and we heard one say to his companion, who burdened the air with lusty sighs, 'You in love again?'

"'Yeah.'

" 'Who with?'

" 'I don't know.' "

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