Books: Wishful Worker

CRANBERRY RED—E. Garside—Little, Brown ($2.50).

Wherever workers forgather, you may hear someone relate how he told the boss where to get off. Such wishful yarns are rarely believed but rarely challenged. A number of proletarian romances, realistic enough at first glance, have much the same ring about them. Latest is Cranberry Red, a story laid in a Cape Cod cranberry cannery and the surrounding bogs. The scenery is authentic and picturesque, the language lusty, the story lively. But the author puts too many over on the boss.

Laze Symmes is a giant, hard-driving Yankee,...