Books: Good News from Spain

TORMENT (312 pp.)—Perez Galdós—Farrar, Straus & Young ($3.50).

Offhand, this novel has what seems a pretty used-up plot, the story of a tarnished Cinderella. Senorita Amparo Emperador was very beautiful, very poor, and an orphan, without beaux or hope of dowry. In Madrid, in 1867, that was about as bad a fix as a girl could find herself in. So Amparo had become a slavey for her distant, stingy relatives, Rosalia and Francisco Bringas, who kept her jumping from dawn to dusk and repaid her with spoiled food and a few rare pesetas.

Then Agustin,...