Books: In & Out the Window

THE MARRIED LAND (41 2 pp.)—Charles G. Bell—Houghfon Mifflin ($5.95).

The severest test of the novel reader is not the interior-decorating lady author whose every point is petit; nor is it the literary bedroom peeper of the huff-puff-periphrasis school ("Metaphor pounded at his temples and his heart swelled with simile"). The most egregious trier of patience is, surely, the Author Who Has Read Proust. He will send his hero into the kitchen to mix a drink, say, but sure as Remembrance of Things Past comes in seven volumes, the ice tray wall remind the...