Books: Drains

MR. CHILVESTER'S DAUGHTERS—Edith Olivier—Viking ($2.50).

Authoress Olivier has filled a long-felt want by writing a whole novel on the entrancingly English subject of drains (U. S.: plumbing). It opens quietly enough in a cathedral close, where a Mr. Chilvester inhabits a Christopher-Wrennish house and quietly tyrannizes over his two daughters, flotsam of two relicts dead in childbed. There is an odor of more than sanctity about Mr. Chilvester's house. Yes, drains! First to notice it is not any inhabitant of the house but the Dean's nephew, young Christopher, who as an architect takes...

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