The Whelping of Jalna

THE WHITEOAK BROTHERS (307 pp.)--Mozo de la Roche -- Atlantic-Little, Brown ($3.75).

The year 1927 is recorded in literary history as the year of Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry. Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain and Willa Gather's Death Comes for the Archbishop, among other notable books, but for fans of Mazo de la Roche, the real importance of 1927 is that it saw the first of her Jalna novels. Now, 15 Jalna novels later, Author de la Roche has produced another volume in her indefatigable chronicle of the Whiteoak family of Ontario.

The latest installment of the Jalna story has special appeal, because when Author de la Roche first began slicing the Whiteoak loaf it never occurred to her that it was going to have to last for a quarter of a century. Now she is obliged to do some fine cutting off the butt end. The Whiteoak Brothers is about Jalna in 1923, but as there have already been eight books about Jalna since 1923, De la Roche fans will have a grand time chuckling over the brothers' efforts to evade destinies that have long since been translated into 14 languages.

Charmer from Yorkshire. Brothers starts with Renny Whiteoak, master of Jalna, firmly in his seat, or rather his saddle, because Renny is the type of man who only gets off his horse when he is watching a horse show. Uncles Ernest and Nicholas are still getting aged and shaky; Grandma Adeline (who died some books ago) is lively as a cricket at the age of 98. Brothers Eden (22), Piers (19), Finch (15), Wakefield (8) are still in the process of growing into the well-known adults they have long since become : their habits of twisting each other's arms, catcalling and frolicking make grandma trumpet, "Ha! I like to see the whelps rioting!" New to Jalna is Dilly Warkworth, a charmer from Yorkshire who has come over to snare Renny. New, too, is sinister Mr. Kronk, a rascally stockbroker who finds in brother Eden (the family poet of earlier Jalna books) the very sucker he wants.

Readers who are interested in money will enjoy reading of how innocent Eden persuades almost all the Whiteoaks to invest in Mr. Kronk's phony mine. But those who think love is more important will follow with bated breath the duel between steady Renny and giddy Dilly:

" 'We are made for each other,' she said breathlessly. '. . . We can't help coming together, can we?'

"He stroked his left eyebrow with his forefinger. 'I don't see why,' he said."

Dispassionate Wonder. Renny's Whiteoaky common sense drives Dilly crazy. "Patronizing brute!" she screams, waving a poker at him. But the master is so unmoved that when Dilly bends over "to sweep the hearth," he, "dispassionately observing her figure from the rear, wondered how he ever could have expected her to have a good seat on a horse." "Her achievement," Critic Edward Weeks has said of Author de la Roche, "makes me think of Trollope and Galsworthy." In fact, Author de la Roche's achievement seems to be that she knows that Jalna's changeless orchards, spaniels, horses and horseplay are just what a lot of city-pent readers are grateful for. She is to her worldwide audience what bedroom slippers are to tired feet--cozy, roomy, unashamedly woolly and beyond artistic criticism.

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