FICTION: Sophisticated Crevices

THE HARD-BOILED VIRGIN— Frances Newman—Boni & Liveright ($2.50).

Read the first ten pages to catch the style, the last 100 pages to enjoy the pick of the wise-cracks," which in acute Miss Newman's connection are not facetious explosions but sophisticated crevices. A straight string of sentences forever declarative but never simple, 285 pages of cleverly affected monotone unbroken by anything more sensational than "and's" and."but's," narrate the outward efforts and inner constrictions of Katharine Faraday of Peachtree Street, Atlanta, in her evolution from a plain, flat-chested, bookish little girl whose snobby...