Books: Old-Fashioned Abandon

THE FLOWER GIRLS (629 pp.) — Clemence Dane—Norton ($4.95).

This novel has elephantiasis of the prose glands, but basically it is an anemic little yarn about an English theatrical royal family. Jacy Florister, 27, an ex-child star dangling rebelliously from maternal apron strings, has long wanted to know more about his deceased British father, whom his mother always refers to as "a moron." When poolside sex and liquor kill mother. Jacy quits Hollywood and flies to England to scratch around for his "roots." He not only digs up the Florister clan, a prolific,...