Books: Education of a Rich Boy

A SEA CHANGE (372 pp.)—Nigel Dennis—Houghton Mifflin ($3.50).

This novel was published in England last June as Boys and Girls Come Out to Play, a title that the U.S. publishers discarded as overlong and over-likely to suggest a book for juveniles. U.S. readers may nevertheless bear it in mind, for the book can be taken as an engraved invitation to a whole class of career intellectuals to break out of their nurseries. It is a civilized and at times a sardonically funny satirical novel.

The comedy in A Sea Change comes bubbling from the familiar...