HAMMOCK FARE

Rodell, Katherine

Hammock Fare THE OTHER FATHER, by Laura Z. Hobson. Simon and Schuster. 307 pp. $3. THE CIRCLE OF THE DAY, by Helen Howe. Simon and Schuster. 265 pp. $3. THE BOYS FROM SHARON, by Louise Field...

...He doesn't know what to do about his marriage or about his young mistress, he loses his job, and his relations with his daughters, his son, and his sister could not be more of a mess...
...It is exquisitely written, sensitive without being precious, delicate without being vague...
...Robinson's triumph that one continues reading even after this pattern has so clearly emerged...
...Here I have been complaining that a serious subject has not been treated seriously enough, then that a carefully worked out theme was too slight, and now I have a book to consider of which neither criticism is true, and still I don't like it...
...For what it is, the book is completely successful, but it is very slight, however charming...
...3.50...
...I hope that now that Mrs...
...Reviewed by Katherine Rodell LAURA HOBSON'S novel The Other Father, looks to me so much like a natural for Hollywood that I would think it was unnecessary to read it, for sooner or later it will be on the screen...
...Yet for all that, The Cardinal seems' to me a piece of clever propaganda, for the central character is a caricature rather than a person...
...And it is written with the greatest care and detail and with obviously plenty of solid research...
...Everything that he does turns out well, and after the first few episodes it is clear that this is going to be the case all through the book...
...but it is not enough to make a good or even a true book...
...It is inevitable that a faithful Catholic should write so as to justify the Church's position in controversial issues, but it does seem to me that Mr...
...I can only hope that this was turned out in a hurry to meet some commitment, and that she will take a lot more careNwith her next one...
...Andrew Dynes, the father, has, unfortunately, an almost comic quality, for just about everything that could happen to the poor man does...
...But I assure you that a) you won't be surprised and b) you probably won't think it was worth the effort...
...At the risk of sounding madly irreverent I can only say that he struck me as the Lanny Budd of the Catholic Church...
...Robinson loads his arguments again and again...
...Hobson) until at the end he reaches a degree of understanding as improbable as it is complete...
...Cooper has so surely mastered her style she will pick a subject of greater depth and larger meaning...
...The Boys From Sharon is a little masterpiece in a minor key...
...Myself, I find that Freud sweetened by a Ladies Home Journal point of view is like good whiskey mixed with 7-up...
...However, because he is a really good story teller, the book is extremely readable, which in a way may be unfortunate, for it is none the less only a tract...
...Helen Howe's Circle of the Day is another novel written with polish and women's-magazine cleverness which never awakens an emotional response and adds up to little more than a pleasant afternoon's reading...
...Yet for a man who has shown at the beginning of the book an almost unbelievable obtuseness about his emotional involvements, he blunders along, unaided (except by Mrs...
...Paper bound, $1...
...The whole question of the emotional interaction of parents and children is an important one—as important as the question of anti-Semitism—yet, as in Gentleman's Agreement, Mrs...
...2.75...
...Louise Field Cooper is a writer who takes the greatest of pains with her work, and each of her books seems to me to show a measurable advance over the last...
...Since the husband will not give up his relationship with the boy, her problem of course is What To Do...
...The Cardinal, by Henry Morton Robinson, certainly deals with an important subject—the rise of a young man through the hierarchy of the church to the rank of Cardinal, with the hint that he may well go on and be the first American Pope...
...The little boys are wholly delightful and, what is more, believable...
...Harper & Brothers...
...Hobson has skated over the surface...
...Miss Howe has written two other books, which, while they had a certain contrived-ness, seemed to me to represent a good deal more thought and work than this one...
...THE CARDINAL, by Henry Morton Robinson...
...579 pp...
...It takes one through the day of a young woman who discovers on her tenth wedding anniversary that her husband has not only been unfaithful to her, but has through the liaison acquired a son who looks so incredibly like him that even casual acquaintances realize at once who he is...
...But I am sure the book will be a best seller, for the father who doesn't recognize the extent or the kind of his devotion to his daughters makes a fascinating subject, even if it deserves a more penetrating treatment than it receives here...
...THE BOYS FROM SHARON, by Louise Field Cooper...
...It is Mr...
...I won't tell you what she decides, in case you want to read it and find out for yourself...
...It is a slick, polished job, with enough of a real problem to appeal to moviemakers who consider The Snake Pit and The Lost Week-end entertainment, and just enough sex and just enough hint of abnormality to make it titillating...
...242 pp...
...She does so with a certain deftness and even charm, as well as with a bright glibness...

Vol. 14 • July 1950 • No. 7


 
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