Books: Blithe Spirit

MISTER JOHNSON (261 pp.)—Joyce Cary—Harper ($3).

Johnson's big trouble was that so many of the good things in life are not really free. Bamu, for example. She was a real Nigerian beauty, "with a skin as pale and glistening as milk chocolate, high, firm breasts, round, strong arms." Johnson, "black as a stove," all floppy arms and legs, and with a body "as narrow as a skinned rabbit's," tried to soften up Bamu with sweet talk: "What pretty breasts—God bless you with them." But Bamu could not be honeyed, she had to be bought. After a full day of hysterical bargaining, Johnson...

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